Creepy Pair of Underwear! by Aaron Reynolds

Hey, Story Seekers!

Jasper Rabbit is not a little bunny anymore.

He's a big rabbit.

Big rabbits aren't afraid of the dark.

Big rabbits definitely aren't afraid of underwear.

Even if the underwear glows.

Green.

In the dark.

And keeps coming back.

Okay.

Maybe we should discuss the underwear.

We're exploring Creepy Pair of Underwear!, written by Aaron Reynolds and illustrated by Peter Brown, the 2017 follow-up to Creepy Carrots! and another visit with Jasper Rabbit.

Readit has already reached a decision.

"I'm not wearing them."

You haven't even tried them on.

"They GLOW."

Fair.

Book Breakdown

Jasper is at the underwear store with his mom.

He's supposed to be getting plain white ones.

Then he spots them.

Green. Glowing. With a face.

He has to have them.

Because he's a big rabbit now, and big rabbits wear creepy underwear.

His mom buys him a pair.

Then bedtime arrives, the lights go out, and Jasper discovers a feature he may not have fully considered at the store.

They glow.

Not a friendly night-light glow.

A ghoulish green glow.

Jasper isn't scared.

Obviously.

He's just done with them.

So he gets rid of them.

And they come back.

This is where the book gets good, because Jasper's solutions escalate into genuine lunacy. He hides them. He cuts them to shreds. At one point he mails them to China.

They come back.

With souvenirs.

Finally he buries them. Deep. Gone for good.

Victory.

Then he goes to bed, and the room is dark.

Really dark.

Even for a big rabbit.

And Jasper realizes the creepy thing that scared him had also been the thing keeping his room from being pitch black.

So he digs them up.

Then he buys more.

A lot more.

He hangs glowing green underwear all over his bedroom and sleeps beautifully.

Watch for the creepy carrot patch on the way through. Jasper's old problem makes a cameo, and readers who know Creepy Carrots! tend to shout when they spot it.

Peter Brown does the heavy lifting here, and the cover tells you he's serious about it. The words are by Aaron Reynolds. The pictures are by, as the cover itself puts it, Caldecott Honor winner Peter Brown.

The book is almost entirely black, white and gray. The only real color is that sickly Day-Glo green, and it belongs to the underwear.

Which turns your eye into a searchlight.

Once you understand that green means underwear, you start hunting for green on every page.

There.

Wait.

How did they get there?

And the underwear have expressions. Actual moods. They are not passive laundry.

For teachers and librarians: Lexile AD470L (the AD means adult directed, so this is built to be read aloud) · Fountas & Pinnell L · ATOS 2.8 · 627 words · ages 4 to 8, grades P to 3. Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, 2017. Forty-eight pages.

It's a New York Times bestseller and it pulled starred reviews from Booklist, Kirkus and Publishers Weekly. It is also, judging by the sheer volume of lesson plans teachers have built around it, close to standard issue in October.

Jungle Jimmy's Journal

Jasper has a pride problem.

Not a terrible one.

A kid one.

He has decided he is too old to be scared, and that is a completely different thing from not being scared.

Kids hit these checkpoints constantly. Certain fears get reassigned to babies.

The dark?

Not scary.

Monsters?

Please.

Glowing underwear with a face, staring at you from across the bedroom?

We may need to reopen negotiations.

Reynolds gets a lot of mileage out of Jasper insisting he's fine while behaving exactly like somebody who is not remotely fine. That's the joke, and it's true to how kids actually operate.

But the thing I'd point at is what Brown does with one color.

He isn't illustrating the story. He's changing how you read it.

Because the green makes you look for the underwear before Jasper does. You're scanning ahead. You're the one who spots them first.

That's the reader doing the work, which is always better than the book doing it for you.

For the read-aloud, slow down at the reveals.

Turn the page.

Wait.

Let them find the green.

They will find the green.

Then there's the ending, which is smarter than it looks.

Jasper doesn't defeat the scary thing.

He changes his mind about it.

The underwear are exactly as creepy on the last page as they were on the first. Nothing about them improved. Jasper just decided they were useful.

And honestly, that's closer to how fear actually works. You rarely destroy the thing. You usually just get used to it, or find a reason to keep it around.

Admittedly, most people don't resolve it by hanging several dozen pairs of glowing underpants from the ceiling.

There are a range of approaches.

One more tip: check the endpapers. There's a laugh hiding in there that a lot of people close the book without ever seeing.

Readit's Review

First of all:

DO NOT BUY GLOWING UNDERWEAR.

Especially if it has a face.

WHY does it have a face?

Underwear should not know where I am.

Jasper throws them away and they come BACK.

He CUTS THEM UP and they come BACK.

He mails them to CHINA and they come back and they BROUGHT SOUVENIRS.

That's not underwear. That's a houseguest.

If I put underwear in the garbage and then woke up wearing it, I would move.

Jasper can have the house.

Also I love hunting for the green because everything is dark and gray and then...

GREEN UNDERWEAR.

There you are.

But the ending is weird.

He buys MORE?

A whole bunch?

And hangs them up around his room?

I would buy a lamp.

Lamps don't follow you.

Usually.

What Others Think

Goodreads has it at 4.33 out of 5 from 6,757 ratings and 880 reviews, and the reader comments are unusually specific about what works.

The best one comes from a librarian, Jeremy, who is clearly living it: "A couple of pesky kids come to the library all the time and make me read this to them. They just scream 'UNDERWEARS AREN'T SCARY, MISTER GERMANY!' over and over again. And then when the story is over, they ask me to start from the beginning."

That is the entire book in one review.

Amy Sands has the practical version: "Want to make 30 kindergarteners laugh so hard they can't sit still. Say creepy pair of underwear a few times. Great for storytime."

Maggie reports a four-year-old running into a logic wall: "Teddy has SO MANY QUESTIONS about this book, 'how do the underwear keep coming back?' 'no but HOW do they keep coming back?'"

Nobody knows, Teddy.

That's the point.

Calista names what Peter Brown is doing: "The best part is the artwork. It's in black and white accept for the underwear which is a glowing lime green. It's a brilliant use of color and man, it works." Schizanthus Nerd gets to the same place faster: "Who knew underwear had so many expressions?!"

And Grace, who is a kid, went straight for the craft: she likes that "they made two pages all black near the end."

Whoa.

That's dark.

Now the honest part, because two separate readers land on the same criticism and they're worth hearing.

Becket: "The faux-noir humor here isn't quite as successful as it was in Creepy Carrots, but it's still an amusing, not-so-scary read."

Abigail puts a finer point on why: "There isn't really a dastardly plot here, as there was in the original."

That's a real observation. In Creepy Carrots!, something is after Jasper and there's a scheme. Here the underwear simply will not leave. It's a haunting, not a plot. If you loved the first book for its twist, this one is looser.

The professional reviewers were less conflicted. Booklist gave it a star and called it "storytime platinum." Kirkus starred it as "perfect for those looking for a scary Halloween tale that won't leave them with more fears than they started with." Publishers Weekly starred it too, and put its finger on the real engine: "the innate absurdity of being afraid of one's undergarments will be a surefire winner with many kids."

Belly Laugh Scale

4 out of 5: Big-Time Belly Laughs

Underwear starts with an advantage.

Creepy underwear is better.

Creepy underwear that will not stay gone no matter what a rabbit does to it is a story.

The laughs come from escalation. Each of Jasper's solutions is more extreme than the last, delivered with total seriousness, and the underwear keeps strolling back in. Brown's expressions do the rest.

Four instead of five for the reason those two readers named. There's no scheme here, no villain with a plan, just a very persistent garment. That's enough for a terrific read-aloud. It isn't quite the machine that Creepy Carrots! was.

Readit has asked me to deduct a further point because the underwear are "watching us."

That's exactly why I'm keeping it.

Final Explorer Verdict

Ages 4 to 8, and I'd point it hardest at the kid who likes being a little scared.

Not nightmare scared.

Fun scared. The kind where you know you're safe but you still check the next page carefully before you commit to it.

It's also made for the kid who has just decided they aren't a baby anymore. Jasper wants the big-rabbit underwear because of what owning them proves about him.

Then the underwear tests the claim.

Know your kid on this one. A child who loves a safe scare will demand it nightly through October. A more sensitive kid, alone in a dark bedroom at 9:15, may file a different review.

If it lands, there's more. Creepy Carrots! came first, and Creepy Crayon! makes three.

I looked for a Belly Laugh Books bridge here and I'm not forcing one. Jasper can see his problem perfectly well. His problem is that it won't leave him alone. That's its own animal.

Or garment.

Readit, why is your bedroom light still on?

"No reason."

You're not afraid of the dark, are you?

"No."

The underwear?

"STOP TALKING ABOUT THEM."

Keep exploring, Story Seekers!

Jungle Jimmy & Readit