My Teacher is a Monster! (No, I Am Not.) by Peter Brown

My Teacher is a Monster! (No, I Am Not.) by Peter Brown
Little, Brown Books for Young Readers

Rating: 5 stars

Here's another great book by author/illustrator Peter Brown that teaches kids that there is sometimes more to a person than what you see at first...

Bobby gets straight to the point: "My teacher is a monster." We readers can already tell by the great illustration by the uber-talented Peter Brown. Mrs. Kirby looks all right from the neck down in a prim, old-fashioned dress. But her head...yowzah! Yup, definitely a monster with those snaggly teeth and bumpy skin and ferociously mean, unamused, constantly grumpy eyes.

"ROBERT!" Mrs. Kirby roars at him when he makes a paper airplane.

Bobby is appropriately frightened of her, so when he sees her at the park one day, he completely freaks out.

Gasp! (I love it when they first spot each other a the park.)

Yet he knows he can't be rude. So he raises his hand to being a hilariously awkward conversation pointing out how strange it is to see her out of school. Mrs. Kirby agrees, and they sit in awkward silence.

Until something happens that changes their relationship and view of each other forever.

A gust of wind blows off her hat, and she frets and worries and nearly cries as the hat is near and dear to her. They both chase it this way and that, but Bobby is the one that catches it.

"Oh, Bobby! You are my hero!" Mrs. Kirby exclaims.

They both freeze by the un-monster-like gratitude that just happened, but they can't undo what was done and said, so they begin to have a less awkward, more lovely day at the park as each shows the other what they like to do there, when alone. As they play together, Bobby sees her in a new light, sees different sides of her he's never seen before. Through the illustrations, as Bobby gets to know her, and she gets to know him, too, Mrs. Kirby transforms from a monster to a normal human.

(Except she's still monster-like when he makes paper airplanes in class, which I completely understand. We all have a finite amount of patience...or at least I do...!)

This book has been out for quite some time so you've probably already seen it before. I even listened to an interview when author/illustrator Peter Brown talked about the process of making the book, and about how he had to be careful when he went on author visits to schools because, well, he didn't want to plant the idea in kids' heads that their teachers were, in fact, monsters!

This is a fantastic book with a great lesson with illustrations both funny and spot-on. Peter Brown has done it again! (To see all of my reviews of his books, click HERE.)

Marilyn's Monster by Michelle Knudsen

Marilyn's Monster by Michelle Knudsen, illustrated by Matt Phelan
 
Candlewick Press

Rating: 5 stars

There's always a New Thing in kids' lives (and in the social parts of parenting, too, don't you think?). What's it in your child's world: An iPad? A specific brand of shoes? Certain socks? I'm willing to go out on a limb to say there is something that everyone wants, but only some people have in most schools in this country.

In Marilyn's school, that thing is monsters.

Everyone's got one. Whether it's big and scary, tiny and cuddly, toothy and happy, or stylish and snappy. Everyone's got one, that is, except Marilyn. And the thing is, you can't just go buy your monster at a store or find it in the forest. It finds you. So Marilyn's got to be patient while her monster finds her. Or so everyone tells her.

Timmy's monster chose him right in the middle of a history test.

But it's hard to be patient when Franklin's monster surprises him in the library! And Lenny's monster creeps out to scare away the bullies chasing him. Or Rebecca's monster comes along on his own bike while she rides her!

Everyone's got one or is getting one. Except Marilyn. She feels stung by what she doesn't have. Every breath has a tinge of jealousy. Everyone tells her, "Be patient!" and "It'll happen when it's supposed to!" and "Just sit tight and wait."

She does all that. And then gets tired of waiting nicely like she's supposed to. She pulls on her hiking boots, packs two sandwiches, and goes out to search for her monster. Hours into the hike, her patience gone and her anger mounting, she shouts, "WHERE ARE YOU???!"

And she hears a tiny voice: "Here."

And then, very softly, she heard a voice say, "Here."
(Enlarge the picture. Look up in the tree, on the right.)

Her monster is up high, stuck in a tree. Her monster's long, lovely wings got tangled up in the branches. She climbs up, goes out on a limb, and rescues it. They share sandwiches in the tree, then her monster flies her back home, where she reports to her family that she and her monster "found each other."

Her big brother is annoyed--it's "not supposed to work that way." She looks at him, her face softens, and she thinks "there were a lot of different ways that things could work."

I love this book. I love the realistic sting of envy in the beginning, the process of waiting she goes through, and the go-get-'em pluck that Marilyn displays by the end when she's too impatient to wait any longer. I just love it all. Michelle Knudsen has written many books over the years, but this is my favorite. By far.

Don't Push the Button! by Bill Cotter

Don't Push the Button! by Bill Cotter
Sourcebooks, Inc.

Rating: 3.5 stars

My kids, especially 3 1/2 year old Kiefer, don't care at all that his book borrows heavily from the incredibly creative and super successful Press Here by Herve Tullet. Critical comparisons is not something Kiefer cares about when he sits down in my lap and asks me in his sweet voice, "Will you please read this book to me?"

(Shame on me that I let a critical comparison decrease some of sweetness of this moment!)

Bill Cotter has come up with a book for toddlers and preschoolers that is all about pushing that button that they shouldn't press. Anyone who has ridden an elevator with any young child already knows how, for kids, buttons are The It Thing and how pressing ALL of them is just so very fun. (And anyone with an older child knows how well they press OUR buttons, but that metaphoric button-pressing hasn't found itself in a book. That I know of.)

In Don't Push the Button!, Larry the Monster first tells the reader not to push the button that appears on the left-hand side of every double page spread. But a few pages in, he whispers, "No one is looking. You should give the button on little push."

A mischievous fellow, that Larry.

So Kiefer pushes the button and on the next page Larry is not purple but yellow. When Kiefer pushes the button again he's got polka-dots. Push it twice and there are two yellow-with-pink-polka-dotted Larrys. You get the idea. There's more button pushing and some book shaking, too, which makes Kiefer laugh.

This is a fun book for kids. Hopefully it gets all that button-pressing-desire out of them so they can leave those on the elevator unpressed...

I Need My Monster by Amanda Noll

I Need My Monster by Amanda Noll, illustrated by Howard McWilliam

Rating: 4 stars

I can't believe Lorelei likes this book.  I actually checked it out from the library because I was curious about a book that would encourage the idea that monsters are under the bed.  I hid it from the kids for a week or two, but they found it on the dining room table.  I need a better hiding spot.

Here's the gist of the story: The little boy you see peeking under his bed is looking for his monster, but instead he finds a note: "Gone fishing.  Back in a week.  Gabe."  A week!  Without a monster!?  The little boy can't sleep without a monster for a whole week!  So he calls on (the monster world?!) and five monsters appear, one at a time, to "interview" for the position.  The little boy finds fault with each of them: The first doesn't have scary claws, the second paints his fingernails, the third is a girl (Lorelei's favorite line: "Boy monsters are for boys and girl monsters are for girls!"), and the fourth is too funny to be scary.  Finally, Gabe reappears and, after some threats to eat his toes if he lets them fall to the floor, the little boy drifts off into a contented sleep.

Lorelei thinks the book is hilarious!  I can't believe it.  But I don't think I'd ever read this to her as a bedtime story, though I bet a lot of parents do...

The author got the idea for the book when her fourth child was born.  Her third child just wouldn't go to bed, and, during what she called "not her finest parenting moment," she wished that she could put a monster under her third child's bed so that she'd stay put.  I love that the author is from Spanaway, Washington, a little town sorta near Tacoma, on the way to my beloved Mount Rainier.  We have dear friends in Spanaway.  I wonder if they have ever run into Amanda Noll?  I'll have to ask!