THE MARVELOUS ADVENTURES OF FUN-BOY

Cosentino offers 12 nearly wordless mishaps, each told in four big sequential cartoon panels rendered in a retro graphic style on double pages. They’re all easy to “read.” Young Fun-Boy takes his eye off his ice cream cone just long enough to lose it to an attentive dog, for instance. Later, his violent play with plastic monsters comes to an abrupt end when a real spider drops in; he discovers the perils of hitting up the same house repeatedly for treats on Halloween; plays Tarzan a little too vigorously on his bed; and slides down a playground slide on which a passing bird has left a sticky deposit. Newer readers will gleefully add their own dialogue and commentary to these episodes, and though they may laugh at Fun-Boy’s mishaps, they’ll come away cheering after he plays “The Masked Ranger” to rescue a “damsel” from a pair of bullies. A crowd-pleaser, imbued with Calvin & Hobbes–style humor. (Picture book. 5-7)