Tuesday Storytime: Monster Bedtimes

There are SO MANY monster books out there now! It's awesome!

My Monster Mama Loves Me So
Laura Leuck, illustrated by Mark Buehner
ISBN: 9780688168667
A monster child narrates roughly over a day explaining how the mama monster does things to show her love. Touching and silly-gross at the same time.

Creepy Monsters, Sleepy Monsters
Jane Yolen, illustrated by Kelly Murphy
ISBN: 9780763642013
A pair of school-age monster (siblings?) race home from school and run through their monstrous bedtime routine before settling down to sleep at the end.

Goodnight Little Monster
Helen Ketteman, illustrated by Bonnie Leick
ISBN: 9780761456834
A VERY CUTE toddler monster goes through an exhaustive and inclusive bedtime routine, this time from the mama's perspective. Really seriously adorable, but man those spiders on the end-papers are gonna be the death of me.

Tuesday Storytime: October Already!

The month of October is a happy time for my storytime selecting; as it becomes essentially a month-long celebration of Halloween and all things spooky. This is my partner's first October, and she's off to a great start:

Me and My Dragon: Afraid of Halloween
David Biedrzycki
ISBN: 9781580896580
The boy and his adorable bright red dragon confront the frights and startlements of Halloween, and decide it's not that bad after all.

Penguin and Pumpkin
Salina Yoon
ISBN: 9780802737335
A little longer than it seems like it should be: Penguin heads out away from the ice with a pack of friends to see what "fall" is like, but baby brother Pumpkin has to stay home, as he's not quite big enough. (Serious questions about given names in this world remain unanswered) When Penguin and crew come back with fall leaves and pumpkins for all, they do what they can to give baby Pumpkin a chance to experience fall himself.

Crankenstein
Samantha Berger, illustrated by Dan Santat
ISBN: 9780316126564
Crankenstein is a very scary monster. Have you seen it? Check around when there are annoying or disappointing situations, or when life just doesn't go quite right. Crank will vanish sometimes, but it will always be back. A funny sideways view of childhood fits and grumps works perfectly for this time of year.

Tuesday Storytime: Halloween Prep

It was a couple of weeks before Halloween, and I was still working my way through my tons of lovely Halloween and monster books.  This time around I focused on fears of Halloween (either parental or kid-centric) and picked a trio of reassuring monster mashes.

Me and My Dragon: Scared of Halloween
David Biedrzycki
ISBN: 9781580896597
The cute duo from Me and My Dragon handle big Halloween fears.

This one is more fun if you're familiar with the Me and My Dragon book, but even so, it's pretty obvious that the dragon isn't really the one who's apprehensive about Halloween.  Friends and family are reassuring, and the boy uses psychologically-appropriate positive self-talk to encourage himsel-SCUSE ME, his dragon, and everything turns out to be fun and enjoyable.

Where's My Mummy?
Carolyn Crimi, illustrated by John Manders
ISBN: 9780763631963
A baby mummy starts to play hide-and-shriek with his Mommy mummy, but gets lost.

I think I'll probably be reading (or suggesting) this book for my whole career.  Baby mummy is playing hide-and-shriek before bed, but now he can't find Mommy mummy anywhere.  He wanders the graveyard, swamp, and woods searching for her, and finding creepy (but helpful and caring) grownup neighbors instead, all prepping their own selves for bed in various ways, and eventually ends up in the woods, scared by something truly terrifying - a mouse!  Mommy mummy is instantly there to save the day and provide reassurance and a return to the bedtime routine.  Really really really cute.

Not Very Scary
Carol Brendler, illustrated by Greg Pizzoli
ISBN:97803743551470
Melly counts up scary creatures on her walk over to a Halloween party, where she meets them again.

Melly is headed to her cousin's Halloween party, and she's a little bit nervous that it will be too scary for her.  As she heads down the street, the ever-increasing numbers of creepy Halloween creatures in this cumulative counting book make her more and more nervous, until she gets to the party and is reassured to realize they're not very scary after all.

Tuesday Storytime: Scary Friends

It's OCTOBER!!!!

Yay!  Now I can use all my scary books and my monster books and my black cat books and my pumpkin books and really there are just too many good books to use for as few Tuesdays as there are in October.  If I had a storytime every day in October, I might get through them all.  Anyway - we start off the month gently, with a set of "scary" friends.

Leonardo the Terrible Monster
Mo Willems
ISBN: 0786852941
Willem's signature colored papers and oddly-placed figures in space.

Leonardo is a really terrible monster.  I mean, just horrible.  He can't scare anyone!  So he hatches a plan - to find a super-scaredy-cat kid and at least manage to scare ONE person.  Leonardo is so terrible at being a monster that he can't even manage that, so he makes a scary, big, decision, and finds something he can do wonderfully.



Spike, the Mixed-up Monster
Susan Hood, illustrated by Melissa Sweet
ISBN: 9781442406018
Bright colors and scribbly outlines make this fresh and energetic.  Mexican-Spanish phrases and styling.

Spike is an axolotl (its a real thing, go look it up) and he desperately wants to be a scary monster, but he's really tiny, and kindof cute.  At least, all the other creatures at the pond think so.  When a truly scary gila monster heads over, everyone else flees, and it's up to Spike to scare the other monster away!  He's never scared anyone yet - will he succeed this time?  I love that the "appearances are deceiving" message goes both ways in this story, and that Spike instantly offers help and encouragement.  A good message, with a good set of non gendered anthropomorphic characters.


Wolf's Coming!
Joe Kulka
ISBN: 9781575059303
Kulka's illustrations are dark and forboding and looming, with plenty of expressive faces.

A set of woodland creatures scurry and hide in rhyming sequences as a business-suited, square-shouldered, enormous wolf stalks through the woods, getting closer and closer to home.  A sharp eye (or multiple read-throughs) will reveal tiny little hints at a twist ending, but suffice it to say that all the build-up is for a totally different sort of shock than the kids (or parents) are expecting.

Tuesday Storytime (& LAST SRP): Monster Foods

Our last summer reading program - I feel like I've missed so much of the program this year because I've been assigned to other tasks away from the circulation desk, and also had to miss several program days.  It seems to have gone smoothly and everyone in my programs enjoyed themselves (and reported good things about the others).  Now for the long awaited recovery period until next spring!

Book Lists for Storytime and Summer Reading were identical this time around, so titles are in the order I gave them, and simply listed the once.

Monster Chefs

Brian and Liam Anderson

ISBN: 9781596438088

Monster Chefs have to find something new for the king to eat, but keep coming up empty-clawed.

Very cute, and the twist at the end is very nice (I very much appreciate the character design of the twist.)  The king of monsters is tired of eating eyeballs in ketchup, and demands his four chefs venture into the world to find something new to eat, or become dinner themselves.  Each finds an animal, who is clever enough to talk themselves out of being dinner, to the sadness of the chefs, except the last chef, who goes in a completely different direction (no pun intended) to get themselves out of the stew. 

Betty Goes Bananas

Steve Antony

ISBN: 9780553507614

Betty the baby gorilla has a bit of a temper problem, exacerbated when she encounters a recalcitrant banana.

I love the way that temper tantrums are presented here, with a quick escalation, and a just-as-quick calming - just the way kids themselves at that age operate.  Betty really wants to eat that banana, but things just keep going wrong!  It won't open, then it is open, but SHE wanted to open it, then it BREAKS!  Whatever will Betty do?  Throw a tantrum, of course.

LMNO Peas

Keith Baker

ISBN: 9781416991410

Lively peas in costume frolic thematically around giant pastel capital letters.

I normally don't read straight alphabet books in storytimes, and even number/counting concept books are difficult, because they're soooo limited as far as actual story arch.  It's just a straight recitation of things, with a common theme or a silly catch, or perhaps both (looking at you, chicka chicka boom boom) but not much substance.  LMNO Peas is not the best storytime read, but it's at least cute and has enough interesting vocabulary to get through a recitation.  These peas are alphabet peas, and they have professions and interests that span from A-Z.  The drawings are quite detailed, but the pages are large and well-filled, so they're visually interesting even to the kids in the back rows.  It helps that Baker has a great ear, so the reading (despite the vocabulary lessons) is smooth and the rhymes and cadence just flows right out.  Makes it so much easier when it rolls nicely out like that.

Tuesday Storytime: Monster Families

I love October.  Halloween for weeks on end.  We have spooky books up on display, and I get to read about monsters and mummies and zombies to impressionable kids from now til November.

Zombelina
Kristyn Crow, illustrated by Molly Idle (Flora and the Flamingo)
ISBN: 9780802728036
Way too sweet to be scary.  A zombie girl learns to be a ballerina, and tackles stage fright.

Previously reviewed here.  Still love it, still the sweetest story, but this time around the theme hit more solidly on the family support of her passion.


Where's My Mummy?
Carolyn Crimi (Rock n' Roll Mole), illustrated by John Manders
ISBN: 9780763643379
Woefully undersized hardcover edition has a cute little mummy meeting traditional "monsters."

Despite using and loving this book, I've somehow managed to not review it yet!  This is a cute little "reversal of expectations" book.  Little mummy is playing hide-and-shriek (which really, with small kids, is roughly the truth) with his mommy mummy, but she's either too busy or really incompetent at the game, so he's off searching in various scary environments for her.  First the graveyard, where he meets Bones, then the swamp where he meets the Blob, then a dark cave where he finds Drac.  The pint-sized roly-poly mummy child is totally unimpressed with seeing these friends or neighbors, who are all prepping for bed themselves (brushing teeth, washing faces and ears) but warn the little tyke of "things" that lurk in the darkness.  Pooped, with still no mommy mummy, he rests at the base of a tree until a mouse appears.  THAT's the scare-jump all the parents were waiting for, and mommy mummy is immediately there to rescue, comfort, and take to bed.  ADORABLE.

Goodnight, Little Monster
Helen Ketteman, illustrated by Bonnie Leick
ISBN: 9780761456834
Sweet lush soft-edged watercolor-looking illustrations of an adorable baby monster at bedtime.

This is such a sweet book, but I have a hard time reading it because the endpapers are COVERED in giant nasty spiders.  I "screwed my courage to the sticking place" as best I could, because it really is a sweet story, and because I more often read the slightly sillier and more upbeat My Monster Mama Loves Me So, but I did that one too recently to repeat.  So, I braved the spiders, and had two mamas ask me if they could have the book afterwards.  Courage is rewarded!  In the story, mama is putting baby to bed, and it's just as traditional and standard as you could ask: from bathtime to bedtime snack to toothbrushing to the under-bed-monsters (er, children) check, and the temporary forgetting of the nightlight.  The pictures really are sweet, once you get past all the spiders.