Monster Trucks is a monster driven great good-night book

“It’s a rhyming book”, one of the clever children in class commented as I was reading Monster Trucks to them. The book does rhyme and it’s a monster book that’s being released near Halloween, but the book can’t be defined one that’s exclusive to either camp. Instead, Monster Trucks is a book that contains many aspects of other books that children love and puts them into one happy package that ages 8 and younger will enjoy.

Despite the title and what you might think it’s actually about, Monster Trucks is about monsters driving trucks and other vehicles. There’s a skeleton crew working a roller, the swamp monster has the garbage truck and a Minotaur using a bulldozer. There are four lines of text that accompany each monster who is driving a truck with a pair of rhyming sounds to hook in young children.

When it was my turn to be the mystery reader at school I brought a dozen or so books. My son picked out Monster Trucks for me to read to the class. I found that surprising because he’s reading early chapter books that have very few pictures and no rhyming words at the end of sentences. I asked the class what they thought Monster Trucks was about before I started reading to them.

“Big trucks that smash things”, “Monsters that turn into trucks” and “trucks that turn into monsters” were also popular answers. It wasn’t until the fourth page that the little girl in the front said out loud, “It’s a rhyming book about monsters who work with trucks”. I was pleased at her response so I let the class finish each rhyming word as I read the book aloud.

Occasionally, I would follow that up asking the class to tell me another word that rhymes with the word in question. I was also incredibly impressed that one kid in the class knew what a Minotaur was. I commended him on his knowledge of Greek mythology and asked him a follow up question. When he answered with something that sounded credible I knew that it was time for me to get back up to speed with Percy Jackson.

As a good night book, Monster Trucks is just perfect. It’s loaded with playful, colorful scenes of monsters, trucks and silly things. From the mummies putting a giant octopus in an ambulance to witch driving a street cleaner (cleaning cats!), artist Misa Saburi captures young people’s attention. Author Joy Keller’s rhyming text also does a very effective job of keeping young people entertained throughout the book for multiple readings.