Review: MONSTER MELANGE
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 02 19, 2014
This book would make a delightful Halloween read. The types of monsters are unorthodox and most of them are not very scary! First, the reader encounters The Big Foote Belly Button Lint monster. He lives at the feet of Thomas Mcfee’s bed. It began as some belly button lint and grows bigger every day eating only colored string. There is a Hungry Tree who walks about eating farm animals, the Smelly Kiss, Smelly Sam stomach gasses monster, a Spaghetti Dinner Monster, and the Dead End Rubbish monster.Perhaps the scariest is the cursed School Chair monster. The author describes it as,“One moment you’re thereand the next you’ll be gone;”The Jones family certainly lived to regret not getting rid of The Fridge. I won’t give away its secrets except to say,“No one goes near it anymore:Never will anyone open its door;All it does now is snarl and snore.”Children age six and up will love the absurdity and the silliness in these rhymes, although some of the vocabulary will not be understood by younger readers This kind of slapstick humor is especially appealing to middle grade boys. Although the concepts are clever, the rhymes are sometimes a bit forced. There are some issues with punctuation and line placement. In this kindle version, the illustrations are very small. Larger pictures would have added a lot more to the desired effect of the tales. On the other hand, if you are looking for a very different and funny Halloween book of short tales, this one will surely fit the bill.