Bonaparte Falls Apart

PreS-Gr 2—Whenever he engages in even the mildest of activities, Bonaparte, a skeleton boy sporting a red baseball cap, loses an appendage. Adding to his distress about living with missing parts, the boy worries that classmates will make fun of him when he starts school. His monster friends try to help. Franky Stein glues and screws him together, but then Bonaparte can't move. Blacky Widow spins a web around him, but that just traps him in tangles. When Mummicula wraps him up, Bonaparte can't see. Nothing works until his pals see a dog run by with a bone in his mouth, and hit on the idea of training him to retrieve Bonaparte's bones. The dog, named Mandible by his new owner, turns out to be a fetching champ. Now whether it's on the ball field or in science class, Bonaparte is a huge hit at school. Wordplay such as the monster and dog names and Bonaparte's declaration that his companions are "bone-a-fide-friends" enliven the text. Terry's illustrations, executed in a muted palette and filled with cross-hatching, appear on white ground. His monsters are kid-friendly renderings with large, googly eyes. Several pictures contain humorous touches as well: furniture covered in a web pattern, bushes that appear as grinning fishlike creatures, a pumpkin house, and teeth flying across the cafeteria.