Benny and Penny in Lights Out: Toon Books Level 2

by Geoffrey Hayes, Geoffrey Hayes (Illustrator)

Overview

It’s nearly time for lights out but Benny and Penny just can’t settle down. The moon has gone missing, there’s a flashlight to play with, Benny can’t sleep without his favorite pirate hat—and he left it inside the spooky backyard playhouse!

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781935179207
Publisher:	Astra Publishing House
Publication date:	08/28/2012
Series:	Toon
Pages:	32
Sales rank:	691,433
Product dimensions:	6.31(w) x 9.31(h) x 0.33(d)
Lexile:	GN330L (what's this?)
Age Range:	4 - 8 Years

About the Author

Bestselling author Geoffrey Hayes has written and illustrated over forty children's books, including the extremely popular series of early readers Otto and Uncle Tooth, the classic Bear by Himself, the Patrick Bear books, and When the Wind Blew by Caldecott Medal-winning author Margaret Wise Brown.

His TOON Book series of Benny and Penny books has garnered multiple awards. In 2009, Benny and Penny in the Big No-No! received the Theodor Seuss Geisel Award given by the American Library Association for "the most distinguished American book for beginning readers published in English."

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

It’s bedtime for the mouseling brother and sister—but not before plenty of horsing around and a deliciously scary expedition into the backyard... Another outing positively radiant with child appeal, featuring a pair of close siblings with complementary personalities.
—Kirkus Reviews

Editorial Reviews

It’s bedtime for the mouseling brother and sister—but not before plenty of horsing around and a deliciously scary expedition into the backyard... Another outing positively radiant with child appeal, featuring a pair of close siblings with complementary personalities.
—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

Hayes’ sense of the bouncing rhythms of children’s play, grasp of sibling social dynamics in true-to-life scenarios, and especially his adorably huggable, crayon-colored characters have made him the standard-bearer of early-reader comics.
—Booklist

Benny and Penny are two of the most adorable mice created in a comic book format, and their adventures are engaging to young readers...The series continues to show a fun look at timeless tales of big brothers and little sisters and the wonder of imagination.
—Good Comics for Kids

From the Publisher

K-Gr 2—These mice siblings have very different approaches to bedtime. While Penny is following her mother's directions, brushing her teeth and settling into bed to read a story, Benny is too busy for such routines. When he looks out the window and cannot see the moon, he decides that pirates must have stolen it. After attempting to scare Penny with tales of the Boogey Mouse and dinosaurs, he decides that he might just go to bed after all. He realizes, however, that he has left his beloved pirate hat in the spooky playhouse, and he enlists Penny to help him retrieve it. Containing all of the classic problems that children sharing a bedroom face, this charming graphic novel is certain to delight Benny and Penny fans and find some new ones as well. Hayes's signature illustrations evoke dusk and evening time with the outdoor panels employing blues, purples, and grays while the indoor panels shine with bright yellow as if from a night-light. The mixture of sequential art and full-page panels adds to the movement of the story and will help early readers get a sense of its pacing. A fun addition to graphic-novel and bedtime-book collections.—Stacy Dillon, LREI, New York City

School Library Journal

It's bedtime for the mouseling brother and sister--but not before plenty of horsing around and a deliciously scary expedition into the backyard. As little Penny quietly tries to wash up and pretend-read a story ("One day the princess was sent to her room for being bratty. But she had a secret door…"), her restless big brother interrupts obnoxiously with warnings about the Boogey Mouse, loud belches and other distractions. When Benny realizes that he's left his prized pirate hat in the backyard, though, Penny braves the Boogey Mouse to follow him out of the window and prod him into reclaiming it from the spooky, dark playhouse. She also "reads" him to sleep after the two race, giggling at their fright, back indoors. Framed in sequential panels that occasionally expand to full-page or double-spread scenes, the art features a pair of big-eared, bright-eyed mites (plus the occasional fictive dinosaur) in cozy domestic settings atmospherically illuminated by the glow of lamps, Benny's flashlight and the moon. As in this popular series' earlier episodes, dialogue in unobtrusive balloons furnishes the only text, but the action is easy to follow, and Hayes provides plenty of finely drawn visual cues to the characters' feelings. Another outing positively radiant with child appeal, featuring a pair of close siblings with complementary personalities. (Graphic early reader. 5-7)

Kirkus Reviews