Bright Lights and Starry Nights!

K-Gr 3–If Owly and Wormy want to look at the stars at night, they will have to be resourceful, and brave. Lanterns and candles will make the darkness seem less scary, but the screeching noise they hear outside seems to be following them. When they lose their telescope on the way to their campsite, Owly hesitantly goes back into the woods to retrieve it. Instead of running into a scary monster in the dark, though, he meets a trio of friendly bats who help Wormy enjoy the stars despite being surrounded by the darkness of night. This is Runton’s second wordless picture book based on the graphic-novel series. Simple illustrations and punctuation marks (a sad face followed by a question mark) replace the words that would normally appear in the characters’ word balloons. Runton’s charming drawings add to the irresistibility of this touching story.–Tanya Boudreau, Cold Lake Public Library, AB, Canada