Pizza and Taco: Dare to Be Scared!: (A Graphic Novel)

Gr 1-3–Pizza has a Ghost Pepper Mask and uses it to scare bestie Taco. It works. Taco, whose funny bone is not as developed as Pizza’s, needs to scare back. The friends decide to have a “dare-to-be-scared” challenge. Taco forces Pizza into a dark closet for 10 minutes; Pizza dares Taco to spend 10 minutes in the basement. Neither will admit to the fear readers will see in their expressions. The next challenge involves scary movies; ultimately, they end up ghost-pepper hunting in a cemetery where the sounds of their own flashlights, footsteps, and nearly everything else sets them off. The best thing about these two is their perfectly timed enthusiasm for the ideas they try out on one another. Hands raised, big cheers—this is exactly how elementary age friends can spend an entire day. Shaskan—are these colorful digital drawings really effortless or do they just read that way?—uses the comic panels to drive the action ever forward, with little asides as the friends “think, think, think” and hatch their plans. Whether all the silliness actually translates to vocabulary-building as part of the Stepping Stones mission, it certainly will give readers confidence in their skills. The pages fly by.