GOODNIGHT, BRUCE

A bear has one mother of a problem: getting his spirited wards to go to sleep.

Bear Bruce—the crotchety, unibrowed reluctant parent to a gaggle of mice and geese—is having trouble convincing them that it’s bedtime. They ask for “five more minutes” of their monster movie; Bruce isn’t budging. But he’s slow on the uptake when a mouse says, “Oh, wait! We haven’t cleaned up our model airplanes,” after which their tidying turns into a play session. (Adult readers with kids will see the Mother Bruce series as a spin on the trials of parenting.) Despite himself, Bruce has become good at his job: He can interpret a goose’s “Honk!” (Bruce: “What do you mean you forgot to finish writing a letter to your Aunt Gladys?”) with negligible effort. What’s different this time around is that Higgins tells the story entirely in dialogue, and the exchanges are like comedy bits. (Mouse: “I’m thirsty.” Bruce: “I just asked who else wanted milk! Why didn’t you say so then?!” Mouse: “Because I want sparkling water.”) As ever, this series’ matchless humor hinges on Higgins’ visual characterizations: Bruce’s permanent look of irascibility versus the critters’ expressions of wide-eyed innocence, played out in a cozy rustic setting. By book’s end, it’s clear who’s in charge. (Guess who ends up watching the rest of that monster movie?)

Reads like a “Who’s on First?”–level comedy routine, to utterly charming effect.