Review_CHILDREN’S102 PUBLISHERS WEEKLY ■ SEPTEMBER 2, 2019
Review_CHILDREN’S Review_CHILDREN’SAlfred’s Book of Monsters
Sam Streed. Charlesbridge, $15.99 (32p) ISBN 978-1-58089-833-1
Working in a minimalistic palette of browns and grays,
Streed introduces a boy who, much to the chagrin of his proper,
tea-loving aunt, loves reading about “terrible” monsters in his
favorite book. As the book’s ragged,
antiqued pages (and Alfred’s hands
atop them) fill the spreads, readers
encounter the monstrous characters:
the cold-skinned, stream-dwelling
Nixie; the shaggy, one-eyed Black
Shuck; and the Lantern Man—a
floating spirit with skeletal limbs who
carries a sinister lantern (“the light of
one thousand stolen souls”). After another “delightful” tea
pushes Alfred too far (“I want MONSTERS!”), wordless panels
show him racing to the graveyard to deliver an invitation to
the monsters—who are not only very real but barge into the
house for a wonderful, “terrible” tea time. Streed conveys a
child’s love for frights while delivering a blend of droll humor
and chilling creatures. Ages 3–7. (Aug.)Ginny Goblin Cannot Have a Monster for a Pet
David Goodner, illus. by Louis Thomas. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt,
$17.99 (40p) ISBN 978-0-544-76416-3
Goodner and Thomas’s little green goblin returns to the
page following Ginny Goblin Is Not Allowed to Open This Box.
This time, the alternately enabling and exasperated narrator
enlists readers to find Ginny a pet alternative to the “kind of
stinky” goats of which she’s so fond. “But I want to be clear,”
says the narrator, adopting an ineffectively officious tone:
“Ginny Goblin should not need a giant net to find a pet. She
should not need a bear trap, and she definitely should not
need to drive an army tank.” The ever-oppositional Ginny,
meanwhile, equips herself to pursue monsters ranging from
an “unfathomable” deep-sea kraken to a “petrifying” basilisk.
As the gouache and pen-and-ink vignettes grow ever more
outlandish despite the narrator’s attempts at “a nice safe pet,”
readers will realize that Ginny is neither oblivious nor foolhardy,
but rather fiendishly clever. Ages 4–7. (July)Smarter Than a Monster: A Survival Guide
Brandon Mull, illus. by Mike Walton. Shadow Mountain, $17.99
(32p) ISBN 978-1-62972-610-6
Mull and Walton’s message-heavy picture book aims to
diffuse the anxiety of imagined horrors at bedtime. The way
to banish monsters, the text sensibly suggests, is for kids to
arm themselves with knowledge about their characteristics,
behaviors, and weaknesses. As Walton’s neon-bright cartoons
show children demonstrating the dos and don’ts of dealingwith the impish beasts, Mull provides monstrous attributes
largely aimed toward ensuring that children practice sterling
habits. According to the text, monsters don’t attack kids who
sleep in their own beds, avoid television, and regularly brush
their teeth and bathe (“not only do they avoid clean children,
monsters hate the smell of soap”). Though additional advice
(for example to avoid clowns) feels more tongue-in-cheek,
readers are likely to recognize the subterfuge at hand. Ages
4–8. (Oct.)Goblin Moon
Jacqueline Rogers. HarperCollins, $17.99 (32p) ISBN 978-0-06-279229-7
The pale “Old Goblin Moon” presides over Halloween with
an enigmatic smile, “creating strange shadows” as a human
family trick-or-treats. After the people retire, it beckons the
littlest goblins to make mischief in and around a child’s
house: “The moon calls them out./ I think I can hear/ the
rustling and chattering/ as they get near.” At first, the girl
cowers in her bed with numerous stuffed toys, but as small
goblins storm the yard, then the house, she soon takes control:
“Go BACK to your MOON!” Realizing that goblins need
Halloween treats, too, she shares her Halloween candy, luring
the goblins out from under the sofa cushions and inside the
piano and leading them “back to your goblin-y fathers and
mothers”—who seem every bit as eager as their adult human
counterparts for Halloween’s end. Rogers’s landscape of
undulating lines and plush shapes bathed in cool blue light
evokes a mood that’s more extraterrestrial than autumnal,
lending this Halloween story an otherworldly air. Ages 4–8.
(July)Goldilocks for Dinner: A Funny Book About Manners
Susan McElroy Montanari, illus. by Jake Parker. Random/Schwartz
& Wade, $17.99 (40p) ISBN 978-0-399-55235-9
Montanari and Parker reprise the characters from Who’s the
Grossest of Them All? and wrap up with another twist ending.
Commiserating over the “wretched” young human generation’s
lack of manners, Goblin suggests to Troll that they “find the
rudest child of all and have it for dinner!” Concealing their
plan, they engage fairy tale favorites in conversation and coax
a snotty Goldilocks to Goblin’s cottage, where it’s revealed—
too late for Goldilocks, who flees when she thinks she hears
that she’s on the menu—that the intention of having her dine
with them was to teach her table manners. They’re “the key to
proper behavior,” Goblin says as Troll removes one of the
fancy place settings. The lighthearted premise is somewhat
undone by the friends’ intent to lure unsuspecting children
home, but Parker’s cartoons have a genial oversize feel, with
flat colors and halftone textures that feel like vintage Sunday
comics. Ages 4–8. (July)Monster Manners
Monsters star in five tales of mischief and etiquette.