What can a ghost do when she’s lost her boo? The monsters are adorable and wonderfully diverse in all their multilimbed and -eyed glory, featuring sprouts of hair, horns, tails, and spikes.Ĭombine monsters, ridiculousness, and audience participation for a delightfully raucous result. In his ink, brush, and Photoshop illustrations, Zenz uses bright, plain backgrounds to keep the focus on the characters and their choices. Helpfully, the author breaks this pattern when it comes to potty time.

By the third question, most children will have caught on and will be happily blurting out the most ridiculous item on the page, which also happens to stand out clearly from the other three. Which snack do MONSTERS eat?” A glass of milk, a carrot, a piece of bread, or an umbrella? A turn of the page reveals “MONSTERS eat UMBRELLAS!” Similarly, monsters ignore the rubber ducky, shampoo, and bar of soap in favor of bathing in chocolate pudding. The very simple sentences and clues in the bright illustrations allow even the youngest children to “read” this very quickly. Young readers see each step the monsters take in getting ready for bed and are asked to guess which of several items they might eat for a bedtime snack, use to take a bath and brush their teeth, wear as pajamas, snuggle with, and kiss. Though this book is all about monsters’ bedtime routines, don’t be fooled-this will induce not sleep but its opposite. Throughout, Ross’ pictures of human characters (all white) channel the energy and humor of Quentin Blake’s art, and the illustrations generally help ease some choppy textual pacing. The answer doesn’t come on the next page when his mother finds only the dirty teddy bear in Jackson’s bed instead readers discover the punch line at book’s end in a note saying that Jackson left to make the Bath Monster’s first favorite food: mud pies. “Me?” Jackson asks looking out at the readers. Compelled by its hunger, the monster searches for its first favorite food. The next spread shows a filthy, clothed, and smug boy walking away with his teddy bear, unaware that underneath the floorboards, a huge, grimy Bath Monster expectantly looks at the pipe to the bathtub drain. Eventually, however, he begins to doubt the Bath Monster’s existence and refuses to get into the tub. The implication is that dirty children are its first favorite, so Jackson is keen on keeping the monster satisfied by bathing and draining the tub.

He acquiesces to his mother’s demand that he bathe when he gets dirty since he knows that the Bath Monster’s second favorite food is dirty bath water. Never mind a monster under the bed this one’s under the tub.

The Bath Monster by Colin Boyd