BEAVIS, Paul Mrs. Mo’s Monster Gecko Press, 2014 unpaged NZ$19.99 pbk ISBN 9781927271018 SCIS 1657405
What do you think might happen if there was a knock on the door, you opened it and a monster rushed in? This is what happened to Mrs Mo and this monster has a compulsive obsessive disorder: it needs to constantly crunch, munch, and chew! Whatever Mrs Mo is doing, the monster must also do what it does. Now Mrs Mo finds this somewhat distasteful and suggests a new idea. This puts the monster into frenzy; there is no way it wants to be subject to another. It is after all a monster. It carries on with its behaviour. However, it thinks and thinks and then – what if? Could it do what Mrs Mo does? It tries this and it tries that and it struggles. But they discover they can both cook! They make a birthday cake for Mrs Mo. Suddenly however, there is a knock on the door and two children rush in. What do they do? Bash, smash, and throw! Monster is not happy about such rude behaviour!
This is a wonderfully quirky picture book where the illustrations play with the idea of representation adding to the sense of the fantastic and the marvellous. Teacher notes are available. What I appreciate about this website is the assertion of multiple themes that can be read into the text.
reviewed by John McKenzie
