The tailypo A ghost story

You'll recognize ""I'm here to get my tailypo,"" uttered here by a hairy creature with tall pointed ears, as a change on ""Who's got my golden arm."" Unfortunately the old man whose bed the thing is approaching has already booked and eaten that long black furry tail, which he found creeping through a crack in his log cabin. And so the creature ""jumped on top of that man and scratched everything to pieces. Now there's nothing left of the old man's cabin,"" but ""it"" has got its tailypo. Slow to start and without that sudden pounce at the end, Joanna Galdone's is not the most effective telling of this favorite scary tale, but Paul Galdone's gray-bearded old backwoodsman, sorry-looking hound dogs, and amorphous hairy thing provide enough motion and spooky humor to hold a picture book audience--dead still. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.