May 13, 2013

Monster Books!


In the spirit of Halloween I’m going to talk about monster picturebooks. My new favorites for this year are ZOMBIE IN LOVE and MOSTLY MONSTERLY, both tales of creatures who don’t quite fit in with their surroundings. Written by Kelly DiPucchio and illustrated by Scott Campbell, ZOMBIE IN LOVE features Mortimer, a zombie looking for love in all the wrong places. DiPucchio and Campbell work together beautifully to fill in the comical gaps in the text and together they create a fun story about holding out for true love. Tammi Sauer and Scott Magoon take a slightly different route to self-fulfillment in MOSTLY MONSTERLY, the tale of a girl who is the only monster at her school who has interests in things other growling and lurching (like petting kittens and picking flowers). She struggles to reconcile these two parts of herself in a way that is comical and relatable, teaching readers the ideas of compromises and group hugs.



As I mentioned in the last post I have an awesome FRANKENSTEIN pop-up book, as well as the Maurice Sendak pop-up, MOMMY? FRANKENSTEIN is set up as a pop-up book meets graphic novel so if you’re a fan of graphic novels it’s definitely worth checking out. Sam Ita does an impressive job of mashing the two concepts, as well as a fine job of engineering the pop-ups. Sendak’s MOMMY? Is about a lost boy who looks suspiciously similar to Max from WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE. He loses track of his mother and searches in various rooms of castle for her, including the laboratory and Dracula’s room. Will Bizarro Max ever find his mother? And when he does, what kind of monster will she be? Sendak worked with Arthur Yorinks, who won a Caldecott in 1987, and master paper engineer Matthew Reinhart (swoon!) to bring you the answers to those questions
THE GASHLYCRUMB TINIES by Edward Gorey is an alphabetical list of ways to kill, be killed, die, etc. featuring zombie-esque children so I’m going to add it to the list of awesome monster picturebooks and if you’re a fan of Gorey you should definitely check out TEN LITTLE ZOMBIES: A LOVE STORY by Andy Rash. Both Gorey and Rash find comical and unusual ways to kill their victims characters and the illustrations are always funny and straightforward. I’m also adding in the coolest/creepiest version ofTHERE WAS AN OLD LADY WHO SWALLOWED A FLY by Jeremy Holmes because even though it’s not exactly “monster” it has a very monsterness about it. It’s by far one of the coolest looking books I’ve ever seen (HTTP://WWW.AMAZON.COM/THERE-WAS-OLD-LADY-SALLOWED/DP/0811867935).
Spookily, Scarily yours,
Mel

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