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Overview
Dear Traveler:Say you're sailing in the south,
Or hiking in the east.
Your holiday's delightful --
Till you meet a pesky beast.
What now?
Should you ignore it?
Offer presents?
Run and hide?
Don't make a costly blunder --
Take our handy monster guide!
Synopsis
Dear Traveler:
Say you're sailing in the south,
Or hiking in the east.
Your holiday's delightful --
Till you meet a pesky beast.
What now?
Should you ignore it?
Offer presents?
Run and hide?
Don't make a costly blunder --
Take our handy monster guide!
Publishers Weekly
In vivid rhyme, Ashman (Rub-a-Dub Sub) leads readers on a round-the-world tour of mythical beasts and folkloric frights. A verse introduces each, and a faux-factoid box explains its origins and other matters of interest. There are the Hotots, whose "shoes ooze with swamp-puddle goos" (more soberly defined in the faux-factoid as "evil spirits found in Armenian swamps and rivers"); Ravana, a demon from India with 10 heads and 20 arms; and the North American snowy Sasquatch, aka Bigfoot. Ashman sets up the book as a helpful travel guide ("Guaranteed-some day, some place-/ You'll meet a monster face-to-face./ Don't destroy a great vacation-/ Arm yourself with information!") and offers advice on how to handle the "monster" ("Be careful near Loch Ness./ Don't wander off, oblivious./ Nessie likes the water,/ But she just might be amphibious"). Caldecott medalist Small's (So You Want to Be President?) sly pen-and-inks present three travelers-a girl in safari clothes and pith helmet, her younger brother and an expressive basset hound. The trio begins their voyage in a hot-air balloon piloted by a snobbish sort in early-aviator get-up. Small finds plentiful occasions to poke fun. His Domovik, for example, an irritable Russian house spirit, uncannily resembles Stalin; he draws the Sirens as three gruesome torch singers with a toga-clad backup band. For kids with active imaginations, this clever book takes the bite out of things that go bump in the night. Ages 4-8. (Sept.) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.
Editorials
Publishers Weekly
In vivid rhyme, Ashman (Rub-a-Dub Sub) leads readers on a round-the-world tour of mythical beasts and folkloric frights. A verse introduces each, and a faux-factoid box explains its origins and other matters of interest. There are the Hotots, whose "shoes ooze with swamp-puddle goos" (more soberly defined in the faux-factoid as "evil spirits found in Armenian swamps and rivers"); Ravana, a demon from India with 10 heads and 20 arms; and the North American snowy Sasquatch, aka Bigfoot. Ashman sets up the book as a helpful travel guide ("Guaranteed-some day, some place-/ You'll meet a monster face-to-face./ Don't destroy a great vacation-/ Arm yourself with information!") and offers advice on how to handle the "monster" ("Be careful near Loch Ness./ Don't wander off, oblivious./ Nessie likes the water,/ But she just might be amphibious"). Caldecott medalist Small's (So You Want to Be President?) sly pen-and-inks present three travelers-a girl in safari clothes and pith helmet, her younger brother and an expressive basset hound. The trio begins their voyage in a hot-air balloon piloted by a snobbish sort in early-aviator get-up. Small finds plentiful occasions to poke fun. His Domovik, for example, an irritable Russian house spirit, uncannily resembles Stalin; he draws the Sirens as three gruesome torch singers with a toga-clad backup band. For kids with active imaginations, this clever book takes the bite out of things that go bump in the night. Ages 4-8. (Sept.) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.Children's Literature
Two young travelers and their dog set off in a balloon with their intrepid helmeted, scarfed, and leather-jacketed pilot, to circle the globe. Their journey is charted on a map on the front end-papers, with the thirteen stops marked. For each, Ashman has written this guide in verse describing the mythical monster encountered there. A brief note details the "facts" about the beast below the double-page illustration and the poem. Some of the creatures are unfamiliar; others like trolls, sirens, Sasquatch, and the Loch Ness monster are not. The wry humor of the rhymes is matched by Small's somewhat sketchy watercolors which portray the "monsters" with touches of landscape along with the explorers' encounters: they ride a snowmobile to visit the Sasquatch, a reindeer sled for the adlet, and cover their ears against the song of the sirens. The fun continues through the end-papers with an ending not mentioned in the text. 2003, Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, Ages 4 to 8.— Ken Marantz and Sylvia Marantz