Module 14 - The Monsterologist

Module 14 - The Monsterologist

Summary

This is a poetry collection written by a monsterologist, one who studies monsters. He has collected letters and interviews from different scary creatures like Dracula, Bluebeard, Grendel, trolls, ogres, witches, etc.  It also includes some silly, not-so-scary monsters like the Verbivore that eats verbs from books, and the sock eating monster from the laundry.  It portrays each monster's piece in verse, and uses various action elements like flaps to keep the audience interested.

My impressions

This book is wonderful.  If we are judging by its cover, it is just a beautiful book.  The cover is a heavy red embossed leather.  The end pages are vintage-looking stamps, and each interior page has amazing style and illustrations.  The poems for each of the monsters are delightfully funny and a re a great way to introduce young readers to verse forms in an entertaining way.  It avoided being too scary by leaving things to the imagination.  One example was Bluebeard's ad.  This entry is short and the reader would have to know the Bluebeard story already to understand it, so it is age-appropriate for even younger children. 

Reviews

Reviewers had mixed feelings about this one.  Booklist's Ian Chipman found "the quality of the poems is wildly inconsistent, sometimes even from line to line" but generally liked the book's "bursts of devilish humor and winking creepiness" as well as its "well-designed pages" (Chipman, 2009). Horn Book's Beth Meister noted the "varied mixed-media illustrations accompany the entertaining tongue-in-cheek snapshots of popular monsters" (Meister, 2010). 

Use in a library

Since this book is so fun, it could be a great way to get young readers writing and reading poetry, while removing the homework connotation that poetry often has.  It is intended to be "a memoir in rhyme."  I think it would to fun to have readers follow suit and make their own memoirs in verse.  They could write about their own lives, or they could study something and create a volume to be extend the "Ology" line.  Students could have a great time writing and sharing their own works, while learning to manipulate poetic forms. 

References

Chipman, I. (2009). The monsterologist: A memoir in rhyme. Booklist 106(2): p. 6. Retrieved from Literature Resource Center.

Katz, B. (2009).  The monsterologist: a memoir in rhyme.  New York: Sterling Pub. Co.

Meister, B. L. (2010). Katz, Bobbi: The monsterologist: A memoir in rhyme. The Horn Book Guide,  21(1): p. 166. Retrieved from Literature Resource Center.