Yolen and Murphy are back with another romp for toddlers.
After the success of Creepy Monsters,
Sleepy Monsters, how could they resist more monster mayhem? This
entertaining book about a couple of monsters who set out with their mum on a
romping, stomping, escapade in the park will delight its target audience with a
sequence of unframed double-page spreads choc-a-block with frolicsome fun.
Skylarkery, merriment and boisterous exuberance abound in this book, whose
monsters are the sort to have young tots giggling and chuckling rather than
worrying about who’s hiding in the cupboard when it’s time for bed. The monsters
that populate this story are so fun-loving and waggish the child reader will
not mind in the least about their multiple eyes and arms, or their horns or
gaping-mouths. Kelly Murphy has imbued her characters with warmth and humour;
the slightly muted, colourful illustrations and detail on the page invite the
young reader back for a closer look on subsequent returns. (It may take a few
returns for the very young child to work out who the main protagonists are – in
their orange and yellow – amidst the general monster jollity of each
double-page spread.)
The text of Romping
Monsters, Stomping Monsters is
simple and spare. Rhyming couplets throughout, until the last few pages, Jane
Yolen focusses on movement: ‘Monsters stretch. Monsters twirl. Monsters catch.
Monsters hurl.’ The emphasis on monster sport and the all-important food scene
where the monsters eat giant ice-creams will hold appeal for the target
audience. The story ends with the monster siblings having a barney about who
gets to go first at the drinking fountain, but all ends well when Mum elicits a
‘sorry’ and the text finishes with, ‘All better now’.
A delightfully whimsical read-aloud story about
gambolling monsters and their gleeful shenanigans.Walker Books, 2013
(A version of this review appears in Magpies Vol 28, Issue 5, November 2013)
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