Monsters, Mind Your Manners!

February 15, 2011
Awkward rhymes, predictable situations and muddy illustrations combine to create a didactic look at bad behavior. Hairy horned monsters, one with multiple eyes, all with goofy grins, descend upon a hapless, unnamed girl and boy—presumably brother and sister. They invade the kids' old-fashioned–looking house and promptly make a mess, painting on the walls, sliding on the floors and playing a game of indoor baseball. The monsters then take their bad behavior on the road—to the park, on a bus, to a school classroom and cafeteria (with the inevitable burping) and home again, where they discover the result of their rudeness: They miss the bedtime story. The first sentence typifies the bumpy rhythm of the text: "Look out, children, / here they come, / bringing pandemonium."  A later description—"MONSTERS despise tidiness. / They've made this room a / ghastly mess"—exemplifies the clumsy rhymes. Scales' illustrations appear to have been created digitally and feature bright colors and cartoon-y expressions.  Unfortunately, the attempt to create a sense of action by blurring outlines means that many of the pictures wind up looking smudged and messy. Wide-eyed kids mostly just stand around looking dismayed and are virtually indistinguishable, although some do have slightly darker skin tones. The monsters, meanwhile, never live up to the (limited) promise of the premise. In short: monstrously dreadful. (Picture book. 4-6)

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April 1, 2011

PreS-Gr 1-In rhyming prose, Spurr describes the rude ways in which monsters conduct themselves. From drawing on the walls to hogging the entire seat on the bus, they create pandemonium everywhere they go. "With mouths wide open, MONSTERS chew./Yuck! Who wants to see that goo!/MONSTERS do not know it's rude/to start a battle with their food." But they miss out when they put up a fight at bedtime, for "that's when the world's best books are read!" The boys and girls pictured look on with astonishment at all the terrible behavior. It is they who enjoy a cozy bedtime story with Dad while the monsters lurk behind them jealously. The text provides a good assortment of common behavior issues for exasperated adults to discuss with young children. Scales's comically rendered monsters enhance the story's humorous element, although the unpolished mix of handpainted and computer imagery is distracting. Digitally blurred to indicate motion and left rough around the edges, the artwork brings to mind a frozen animated TV show. Though the text is palatable, the illustrations may not be to everyone's liking, rendering this work less appealing to a general audience than Jane Yolen's "Dinosaur" books (Scholastic/Blue Sky).-Jayne Damron, Farmington Community Library, MI

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