These are books that kids will want to read-or should read, but will enjoy doing so. Board book, picture books, kid lit, elementary school books, middle school books, high school books, all age comic books and more will be talked about here.
Is that real? Does it really exist? Those are the qualifiers for anything that our second grader is reading now. It’s the exact opposite of his brother who was more into madcap humor, science-fiction and Captain Underpants. Nay, his younger brother is mainly attracted to non-fiction. When he read Red Rover, Curiosity on Mars for the first time he peppered me with all sorts of questions about Mars, if people lived there, if water existed there and how the probe was getting its power.
The great thing about an all age book is that it can inspire those younger readers without dumbing down the content for older ones. If said content can motivate elementary or middle school readers to learn (see: read) more about the characters then it’s a massive win/win situation. It’s the breadcrumbs of gateway reading. The Big Book of Monsters by Hal Johnson with illustrations by Tim Sievert does just that. It highlights 25 classic monsters from movies, literature and folklore into a beautiful reference book for the curious.
What I liked most about the book is that it doesn’t feature the go-to monster MVPs. Sure, Dracula and Frankenstein are in there. However, even when they are featured the book treats them in the classic literary sense. It’s as if we’re being given the tour of their book through the eyes of a narrator who’s able to skim the utmost surface of these classics.
For example, the five-page vignette on Dracula takes a broad, but detailed enough to be scary overview of the classic Bram Stoker story. I had forgotten that the classic Drac was able to shape shift, was incredibly strong and a real nasty character. At the end of the overview are two pages dedicated to the mythos of Dracula and some additional stories might tickle your jugular if that story was in your vein. There was also the true-life story of an English poet, his deceased wife and how her impossibly well preserved body might have factored into Stoker’s tale.
How about Fafnir, Apep, The Horla, Humbaba, Rakshashi or The Lamia-have you ever heard of them? We hadn’t and those stories are fabulously told and they were absolutely more terrifying because I was absolutely unfamiliar with them.
The Horla from 1887 is especially cruel. All of the monsters have their scary stats on the first page that they’re featured on. It lists a category, base of operation, when they supposedly lived, powers, dastardly deed and fear factor. Some like The Headless Horseman rank in at three skulls in the fear factor. Let’s face it; to a large section of the population he’s more known as a Curious George short and a Tim Burton film from the late 90’s. Three skulls is being generous.
However, The Horla is from Guy de Maupassant and published in 1887. The Horla came from Brazil and unlike its other monster brethren is invisible-and not in an Invisible Man campy kind of way. The Horla was intent on torturing mankind and treating them the way that humans treat farm animals. Think of it as a vegan poltergeist that drives its host insane and then moves on to another person.
The Big Book of Monsters makes those more advanced readers (like me) want to read more. Additionally, the book is written as such an accessible level that that 10 year-old readers will be able to understand the stories in an age appropriately, scary manner. Some of the stories have a palpable sense of dread. It’s that foggy, damp vibe that dominates Halloween. As this is a book about great characters and stories it’s not exclusively for October. This is a great book, that introduces other great characters that are the stuff of nightmares, but it’s done in a way that those upper elementary kids will enjoy in the most positive of unruly ways.
The above post has affiliate links…because web hosting fees can be scary.…
Mummies are something that we’ve had a keen interest in for decades. When I was single and childless I would plan my vacations around places where mummies could be seen. On one particular excursion I was near Siwa, Egypt and visited a series of tombs that the locals were talking about.* Sure enough, there were mummies there, just chilling out in a series of enclaves that were cut into the side of a mountain. I never disturbed any of the remains-or took anything from the burial site. I’ve seen The Brady Bunch Hawaii episode, I know that taking things from sacred locations never, ever ends well.
How To Win The Science Fair When You’re Dead is the absolute best kind of click bait. I don’t care what the star of JAG is doing now or what happens next in the photo that might have had impeccable timing. I am a little curious, but not enough to unleash the torrent of spam or viruses that’ll be opened up to my computer. This book has that kind of title. Its predecessors, How to Sell Your Family to the Aliens and How to Properly Dispose of Planet Earth were like that also. For us this series has gone from enjoyable to great and now indispensable.
What do Nate Wright and Archie Andrews have in common? Both of them have the ability to cross generations in an entertaining manner with consistent characters who are totally different. Archie Andrews is Archie, that redheaded kid from Riverdale who has appeared in comic books for decades and a steaming hot television show for the past couple of years. The way that Archie has been reshaped to meet different demographics is remarkable. There’s a property that will engage Riverdale fans between the ages of 6 and 75*.
Nate Wright is Big Nate. Big Nate has been one of the most consistently entertaining and laugh out loud comic strips since it debuted in 1991. However, Big Nate has always been in the same middle-school packaging, until now. Little big Nate, Draws A Blank by Lincoln Peirce is board-book Big Nate, but it takes a look at the character as a pre-k kid. The result is a rhyming book that people will enjoy reading to those crawlers or mother’s morning out ages that want to baby step it into the world of Big Nate.
Big Nate goes board book for crawlers to chew on & laugh along toFor a person who is not in elementary school I hang out a lot in an elementary school library. We volunteer at the school most weeks and usually end up where the books are. I like to talk to the librarians, see what the kids are reading and see what the librarians need. Lately, most of the chatter has been that they want more non-fiction books that will engage kids. Awesome Achievers in Science is the second book in this series and does exactly that. The book profiles 12 people in science who make a difference our everyday life. The kicker is that each profile is short, entertaining and fun to read for third graders and up.
Something odd happens in the beginning of October. Small children start to scare themselves on purpose. The older ones pretend to be scary clowns from movies that older kids say are scary, but are really quite horrible. While those middle school kids and upper elementary school ones are doing that, their younger siblings are curious about the classic monsters. Monsters Come Out Tonight! by Frederick Glasser, with illustrations by Edward Miller, is a Halloween lift-the-flap book that will provide the ‘fun’ scares pre-k kids want and need.
Ghoulia, Making New Friends Can Be Scary was a lovely surprise when we read it. The characters had that slightly familiar, spooky family vibe about them. There were traces of The Addams Family, a little Hotel Transylvania and aspects of The Nightmare Before Christmas. Yet, at the same time, Ghoulia was a creation unto its own. And the Mysterious Visitor has more of her-and her family’s story to tell and it’s even more delightful than the first one for the same reasons and more.
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