Mild monster exposure for kids just dipping their toes in creepy.
Following Ghost Attack (2017), a new spooky encounter triggers Alex’s allergies.
White Alex is on the verge of setting a new kickball home-run record. But there’s a new (exceptionally pale) recess monitor that the kids nickname Gloomy Girl, and suddenly Alex can’t stop sneezing—explosions so big they don’t just impede his kickball game, but also bring on massive, sequential humiliations. Field day is coming up, and Alex’s plan to win a trophy with his kickball skills is jeopardized by his allergies. His white cousin Sarah attempts to talk to the monitor to straighten things out only to learn that Gloomy Girl can speak directly into minds and controls an army of rats. The cousins consult The Big Book of Monsters and follow up with internet research (there’s a savvy subplot on how to evaluate online sources), determining that she’s a vampire capable of being outside on cloudy days. But they need to solve the allergy fast—Alex’s parents want to come watch field day, and if his allergist mother sees him sneezing she could pull him from all sports. Lubar’s second in his horror-lite chapter-book series features a likable protagonist whose loopy problem is, though exaggerated, similar enough to real-world ones suffered by many kids to make him easy to connect to. The agreeably zany plot winds its way to a conclusion that even includes reconciliation with a school bully.
Mild monster exposure for kids just dipping their toes in creepy. (Fantasy. 6-9)Pub Date: Sept. 12, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-545-87349-9
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: July 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
No need to be afraid of monsters after reading this sweet and unusual friendship story.
A boy discovers that monsters are real—and that one lives under his bed.
The monster and the boy—no names given—share a bedroom, but they have never met. The monster is nocturnal and has lived under the boy’s bed for many years; he knows the sound of the boy’s voice and loves the smell of his dirty socks. One night the boy’s mother reads her son a book about monsters, and she tells him that there is no such thing as monsters. Knowing this is untrue, the monster decides to introduce himself. Predictably, this doesn’t go as well as the monster expects, and when the boy screams, the monster swallows him in a panic. This is distressing for both the monster (who just lost his only friend) and the boy (who now finds himself trapped inside a stomach). Eventually the monster coughs the boy out—only to discover the boy is now grasshopper-sized. Humor ensues. In archly amusing fashion, the author breaks the fourth wall—this is marked by teal-colored page backgrounds—reassuring readers during potentially scary parts of the book, filling in background details, or collegially including them in aspects of the storytelling. Teal-flecked grayscale cartoons appear on almost every page, making this a solid choice for new independent readers. As depicted on the cover, the boy has tightly coiled brown curls and pink skin.
No need to be afraid of monsters after reading this sweet and unusual friendship story. (Fantasy. 6-9)Pub Date: July 28, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-21783-7
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Godwin Books
Review Posted Online: April 7, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Formulaic but not stale…even if it does mine previous topical material rather than expand it.
A guide to better behavior—at home, on the playground, in class, and in the library.
Serving as a sort of overview for the series’ 12 previous exercises in behavior modeling, this latest outing opens with a set of badly behaving dinos, identified in an endpaper key and also inconspicuously in situ. Per series formula, these are paired to leading questions like “Does she spit out her broccoli onto the floor? / Does he shout ‘I hate meat loaf!’ while slamming the door?” (Choruses of “NO!” from young audiences are welcome.) Midway through, the tone changes (“No, dinosaurs don’t”), and good examples follow to the tune of positive declarative sentences: “They wipe up the tables and vacuum the floors. / They share all the books and they never slam doors,” etc. Teague’s customary, humongous prehistoric crew, all depicted in exact detail and with wildly flashy coloration, fill both their spreads and their human-scale scenes as their human parents—no same-sex couples but some are racially mixed, and in one the man’s the cook—join a similarly diverse set of sibs and other children in either disapprobation or approving smiles. All in all, it’s a well-tested mix of oblique and prescriptive approaches to proper behavior as well as a lighthearted way to play up the use of “please,” “thank you,” and even “I’ll help when you’re hurt.”
Formulaic but not stale…even if it does mine previous topical material rather than expand it. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Oct. 20, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-338-36334-0
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Blue Sky/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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