The Boy Who Cried Robots!

K-Gr 3–The Boy Who Cried Wolf is an old, old story straight out of Aesop’s fables, and this graphic adaptation, while visually playful and cumulatively comedic, doesn’t stray too far from its forebears familiar premise. Sam is a serial fabulist, declaring that a monster ate his homework (cue a cartoonishly gargantuan gobbling gremlin) and that alligators are preventing him from his nightly bath (humorously huge reptiles crammed into a claw-foot tub). Everyone he knows is sick of it, and Sam, in turn, opts to take a sick day to sulk at home. But when he calls his school to report his absence, he makes up his biggest bluff yet: robots with rockets are ransacking his house. The school secretary believes him, the principal calls the fire department and a swarm of support vans—ambulances, astronauts, news crews, and even food trucks—arrive on the scene only to find Sam surprised to see them. He’s gently reprimanded and washes their vehicles in reparation for the error of his ways. The consequences of Sam’s behavior are significantly lighter than the original fable’s violent end, and the book gets its greatest joy from imagining the immensity of Sam’s fabrications. Sparse, simple narration and mostly brief speech bubbles are encouraging and accessible for hesitant readers. Sam is white with blond hair.