When Dalby and Tina are warned not to cross the river, you know of course that they will. The brother and sister find themselves lost in a landscape even more fantastic than the Caribbean countryside they left behind. When night falls, they wander into the arms of Mama Zee, an apparently kindly woman who turns out to be a cocoya, a terrible creature with a taste for little boys and a vampire-like aversion to the sun. Unable to escape from the house by day, each night, Tina must trick the cocoya into caring for her rather than eating her brother. Finally, Mama Zee is caught out in the sun, just as a search party finds the children.

This is a Caribbean Hansel and Gretel, minus the disturbing familial cruelty found in European versions. The children are not abandoned in the woods at the behest of a hateful stepmother. Rather, they ignore their loving mother’s warnings and march willfully into danger. The importance of family is, in fact, a main theme in “Mind Me Good Now!” as clever Tina uses all her wits to save her brother from the cocoya.

Marie Lafrance’s illustrations are tropically lush and just surreal enough to suggest magic from the very first page. Another Caribbean folktale that she illustrated for Annick, Richardo Keens-Douglas’s La Diablesse and the Baby, also features a creature who tries to steal children. The two books are good companions.

“Mind Me Good Now!” contains little snatches of verse that are probably sung in the original telling. This form, the cante fable, is common in African and Caribbean traditions, and obviously loses something in translation to text. But Lynette Comissiong’s lively text maintains a breezy narrative style, which reflects a living storytelling tradition. This is a lovely, lively book.