Monster Museum

Publishers Weekly

To the rollicking beat of Singer's (The Circus Lunicus) absurd poems, children trail an undead docent through a "monster museum" where the exhibits are wax replicas... or are they? The visitors see Frankenstein's creation ("I'm called Frankenstein,/ but it's his name, not mine"), the Blob and "Those mixed-up beasts from ancient Greece: the chimera, the cockatrice." Grimly, a Charles Addams devotee, packs the spreads with frantic activity that rewards sharp eyes; on the tour, sneaky things ambush museum-goers. Among the season's best creature features. Ages 5-9. (Sept.) Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

School Library Journal

Gr 1-5-Singer describes an array of scary apparitions and frightful figures in this "ghastly" collection of poems. Children walk through a museum filled with monsters, memorialized in a variety of poetic forms-from limericks to litanies. For example, they meet poor misunderstood Frankenstein, who wants his own name, instead of that of his inventor. The entry for Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is a two-voiced poetic offering that pits one side of the man against the other. Grimly's colorful caricatures add to the madcap fun. Several of the monsters wend their way out to the parking lot-one even drives the school bus. The "Glos-Scary" helps to keep all of the creatures straight. This fresh, witty book will be popular for not-so-scary storytimes, as well as independent reading. The humor and wordplay running rampant adds to the delight of the whole museum visit. Another howling success for this versatile author.-Kay Bowes, Concord Pike Library, Wilmington, DE Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

This clever collection of 21 rhyming poems by the versatile Singer (Tough Beginnings: How Baby Animals Survive, p. 805, etc.) follows a group of schoolchildren on a field trip to a most unusual museum. The exhibits include a wide variety of monsters of every sort, including all the favorites from Count Dracula to King Kong, as well as lesser-known creatures such as a banshee and a man-eating plant. Each monster is shown in its museum exhibit, with the visiting children often shown in the foreground. The cleverly detailed watercolors by mysterious illustrator Gris Grimly (a pseudonym for Steven Soenksen) steal the show with hilarious humor and offer careful readers all sorts of visual jokes, with additional monsters peering out from unexpected locations. His monsters are charmingly spooky rather than grotesque, and the schoolchildren also have their own quirky personalities. Singer's poems are lively and humorous (if not great literature), and they impart quite a bit of information about various famous monsters. A "Glos-scary" offers excellent definitions of all the monster variations, with enough concrete information and background to satisfy the most committed monster maniac. (Poetry. 5-10)