Skip to main content

MONSTER MUSEUM


BIBLIOGRAPHY
Singer, Marilyn. 2001. Monster museum Ill. By Gris Grimly. New York, NY: Hyperion Books for Children. ISBN 0-7868-0520-X (trade)

PLOT SUMMARY
This zany poetic anthology invites kids to trail behind an undead museum docent. Grimly’s introductory illustration has a human class, complete with school uniforms, meeting the docent. They travel through the Monster Museum and meet all the spooky creatures kids adore, including Count Dracula, King Kong and even Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Along the way, Singer exposes kids to a variety of poetic forms. At the end, there is even a fun-filled “Glos-scary” giving the history of each of the creatures featured. 

CRITICAL ANALYSIS
This book is pure fun. The titled “Monster Museum” poem kicks off the anthology. Then, Singer’s catchy rhythms, repetitions and layouts whisk the reader away. For an example, look to “Man-eating Plants”:

Man-eating plants,
Man-eating plants,
         Look out! They look just like lettuce.

Singer’s humorous comparison of man-eating plants to harmless, everyday lettuce is a repeating technique throughout the anthology: scary versus harmless with a twist of laughter. Perfect for kids! 

An examination of the line breaks throughout the anthology reveal Singer to be a poetic master. By reading only the words at the end of the lines, Singer reveals the themes of the poems.

She also chooses word patterns to hook kids in, like in “Poltergeist,” If your sofa’s shaking / If your toilet’s quaking / If your china’s flying / If your walls are sighing. These easily chanted rhythms will have kids reading the poetry aloud and giggling at the ideas. What kid wouldn’t love a quaking toilet? Kids love the scary, but don’t really want to be frightened. Her word choice and imagery allows kids to explore the spooky monsters, but to laugh along the way.

As an illustrator, Grimly’s focus is on the geometric angle. From the facial features of Count Dracula to the zig and zag of the gremlin tail, the line is the star of the show. Grimly perfectly complements these angular drawings with bold colors and crisp contrasts, such as the orange jacket of Frankenstein set against the green of his skin. For the keen eye, each page is filled with treasures to discover, like the skull’s mouth serving as the top and bottom of the old-fashioned barber shop pole for the poem “Medusa,” who sits in the beautician’s chair with her snake hair.

REVIEW EXCERPT(S)

SCHOOL LIBRARY JOURNAL: “From man-eating plants and Frankenstein’s monster to Medusa and a poltergeist, this museum has all sorts of marvelous monsters.”

PUBLISHER'S WEEKLY: “Among the season's best creature features.”

CONNECTIONS
  • Let kids choose their favorite poem and then a creature which was not in the book, like the Chupacabra or Loch Ness monster. Have the kids follow the poem’s form to write a new poem for their creature, along with an entry for the “Glos-scary.”
  • Read aloud the poem, changing up the readers, i.e. Let the boys read one stanzaa, then the girls another.
  • Act out one of the poems by adding simple hand gestures and body movements.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

FOREST HAS A SONG

Vanderwater, Amy FOREST HAS A SONG. Ill. by Robbin Gourley. ISBN 9780618843497. CRITICAL ANALYSIS Amy Vanderwater brings us a hearty collection of 26 poems. They weave together the story of one girl’s experience in the forest over the course of a year. The poems begin with spring and then merge into summer, with poems like APRIL WAKING and PUFF. Fall and winter poems wrap up this collection, including MAPLES IN OCTOBER and COLORFUL ACTOR. Each poem brings the reader into the forest, so we enjoy the romp through each season with the girl. VanDerwater’s use of language leads the reader to experience the sounds and rhythms of the forest. By employing italics, she brings the forest’s perspective in some poems, which serves as a wonderful point-of-view experience for the young reader. The collection is superbly  illustrated by Robbin Gourley. At its best, illustrations tell a visual story which parallels and enhances the textual message. Gourley does this brilli...
2 comments
Read more

TRICKS

Hopkins, Ellen. 2009. TRICKS. New York: Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing Division. ISBN 9781416950073.  TRICKS takes us on the journey of five teens descending into the seedy world of teen prostitution. Eden is the daughter of a preacher. Her mother sees demons in Eden’s first brush with love and sends her off to prevent whorish behavior, which Eden ironically learns at the ranch where she’s sent. Cody deals with the devastating loss of his stepfather to cancer by spiraling downward into the world of gambling. He soon will sell anything to pay his increasing debts. Seth is looking for love and acceptance of his homosexual identity, only to be accused by his father of being a deviant; then, he becomes one. Whitney desperately seeks love from her socialite mother and successful father. She wants to be seen and noticed by them, but will accept the love of a stranger to replace her familial invisibility. And finally Ginger, who is tricked for the fi...
3 comments
Read more

THE CROSSOVER

BIBLIOGRAPHY Alexander, Kwame. 2014. CROSSOVER. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. ISBN 9780544107717. CRITICAL ANALYSIS I had the opportunity to listen to Kwame Alexander speak at the Texas Library Association conference in San Antonio in April 2014. He spoke on the impetus for Crossover: to write a verse novel for boys. And not just any boy, but the sports-loving, poetry-hating, I-don’t-go-to-the-library sort of boy. I was completely intrigued and knew I had to read this book, because he’s absolutely correct in noticing the gap in this genre’s niche: most verse novels are written to appeal to girls, and boys who do read verse novels are already vested in their own reading identity. But could he pull it off? I will freely admit, although I loved the cover, that I was a bit skeptical of the goal. I’m a middle school librarian, so I really wanted to meet the verse novel which could hook my sports-loving, poetry-hating, I-don’t-go-to-the-library boys into reading i...
1 comment
Read more