Monster School

July 2, 2018
Coombs (Water Sings Blue) conjures up a school full of spooks using snappy rhymes, a variety of verse forms, and plenty of imagination. Amusing doggerel about the school cafeteria food (“old shoe stew and ankle cake”) mixes with a dirge by a ghost who can’t scare anyone (“The witch is the worst./ She doesn’t even flinch. She just says,/ ‘Stay out of my way, Sophie,/ or I’ll turn you to lint”) and a moody meditation from a lonely soul (“People call me a ghost, like my edges are fluttering./ But I’m just quiet”). Comic artist Gatlin’s more ghoulish figures have blank black eyeholes, while more human-seeming kids sport colorful hair and regular duds (“They’ll think I’m ordinary... until the moon is full”). Entwining tendrils and wisps of smoke deepen the sulfurous atmosphere, and classic school elements subverted for laughs will make kids want to ditch their own school and go to this one. Ages 5–8.

August 1, 2018
While the subjects and daily schedule may look familiar, the students at Monster School are a bit different.Take Stevie, for example. He's a zombie, and he's always losing things. Sharp-eyed readers may be able to spy his homework--still at the end of his arm in the corner--or maybe his missing eye. And "multicultural" has a rather different connotation when trolls, elves, witches, and boggarts make up your family tree. But many of the topics Coombs writes about seem more like middle school probs than those of picture-book readers: a girl other students moon over, an introvert, a queen-bee mummy who secretly wishes to be a commoner so she could play, a nerdy "Computer Wizard," hair care (the individual strands are snakes), and a poor "Ghost Girl's Lament" (she cries in the coat closet from loneliness and failure to haunt anyone). Other poems are typical of school collections: a gross-out one about cafeteria food; one about baseball (albeit with a few extra obstacles--avoid the ghouls and don't trip on tombstones); and the requisite poem about homework--when one is dead, there's not much incentive for doing it. Gatlin's illustrations play up the gross and macabre in the small details--monkey in the middle with a head for a ball--and he certainly can't be said to fail at portraying diversity.Middle graders will shiver over this angst-y collection of school verses. (Picture book/poetry. 8-12)

COPYRIGHT(2018) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

October 1, 2018

K-Gr 3-Coombs dips a proverbial hairy toe into the world of endearingly frightful poetry in this collection for young elementary schoolers. The eerie tales begin with an introduction to the monstrous academy: "climb up the wistful, mistful hill/where weeping gargoyles sit/Slip past the gloomful, moonful graves/where small ghosts peer and flit," continuing with poetic portraits the dreadful pupils. "Monster Mash" spotlights a "multicultural" monster whose ancestors had "zapping things, enormous wings, dressed in green, and [were] just a little mean." Readers will find particular delight in the antics of the "Class Pet," who escapes its cage to eat its way through town. When the final poem, "New Kid," begins, readers may be curious why a seemingly human boy would willingly join the raucous crew, but as he explains, "Sometimes kids try to scare me/with a spider or a skull/yeah, they'll think I'm ordinary/until the moon is full." The combination of Coombs' clever verse with comic artist Gatlin's illustrations is picture-perfect. A delightful cast of both humanoid and monstrous creatures, depicted in lush color and rough lines, evokes a full depiction of the school. While a couple of the poems may bump in places, their sum total is both creepy and endearing. VERDICT A wonderful addition to poetry and storybook shelves all year round.-Taylor Worley, Springfield Public Library, OR

Copyright 2018 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.