What are you afraid of? Small places? Public speaking? Spiders and snakes?
Laszlo is afraid of the dark. Who isn't? Do you like to go down into the basement after the sun goes down? Laszlo and dark live in the same house together. Isn't that an interesting way to look at it? They are perhaps sharing the creaks and cold windows and the several sets of stairs. The dark in Laszlo's house lurks in all the usual places....you know that shower curtain issue. They seem to have declared a truce until the night when the dark comes to Laszlo's room and invites him downstairs. Would you go?
The voice of the dark in this story seems to hold a scary, threatening edge but is that because the edge is there or because we expect it to be there?
There is a lot of dark in this book and there are warm bursts of light that are well able to hold us safely. This is a great book for facing fears of all kinds. Once you've wandered downstairs with the dark and taken a chance on what awaits, you just might be willing to revisit some of your old favorites...those spiders and large audiences even!!!
Gentle. Reassuring. Respectful of children.
(There is one page of text that seems out of place but I would imagine one could easily skip that page when reading the story with a group of young listeners. It's oddly didactic.)
40 pages Ages 4-8 978-0316187480
Recommended by: Barb
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Instructor, San Jose State University
School of Library and Information Science, California USA