The Horn Book Guide

PICTURE BOOKS

Fromental, Jean-Luc

Bonesville

48 pp. | Abrams | August, 2016 | Trade ISBN 978-1-4197-2277-6 $18.95

(4) K-3 Illustrated by Joëlle Jolivet. The skeletons of Bonesville call Sherlock Bones when they find that a monster is stealing their bones. The story is mildly scary but repetitive and overly punny; the illustrations, however, are outstanding: crisp white skeletons and swaths of orange-red and yellow appear on black or deep-blue backgrounds. A fold-out poster on the back of the book jacket features an illustration of a full skeleton, with all bones labeled.

Reviewer: Grace Worcester Greene