What do kids want...? Monsters!

What do kids want? Monsters!

One theme that comes up again and again when I’m chatting to kids while helping at the local library is… Monsters! They can’t seem to get enough of them. Funny ones, scary ones, friendly ones… If I ask children which are the favourite of the books they’ve been reading, time and again the books with monsters are the winners.

Don’t be silly Sarah, didn’t you know? There’s no such thing as a Gruffalo! Hah, well that’s what the grownups might say. But every child knows that monsters really do exist and they're lurking under the bed and behind the wardrobe, just waiting for the right opportunity to jump out and pounce.
My own childhood monsters didn’t just hide under the bed. They actually crept inside... or they would have done so if I hadn’t had a night time routine of pulling the bed sheets back to check before I went to sleep each night. I fooled them, see?

So given the actual existence of monsters, what better place to encounter them and learn how to fight them than in books? If anyone can recommend a literary monster or two, please send them my way.

Well, perhaps don’t actually send them my way. Not the scary ones anyway. It’s hard enough getting to sleep during the hot summer nights without having to worry about what might be about to chew off a toe or two…

Horrid Henry's Nightmare

The front cover glows in the dark!

Well it grabbed my attention anyway. I had to cup my hands around my eyes to check. And glow it did. Having pressed my face so close to the copy on the shelf, it seemed a bit rude not to take it to the check-out...

Not that I needed much encouragement. I’d heard good things about horrid Henry from some of the kids at the library where I’m doing voluntary work. The only complaints were about the distinct lack of Henry on the library shelves, the early kids having stripped them bare.

This latest offering from Francesca Simon has the usual collection of short stories. My favourite is the one where Henry and his pal, Rude Ralph, try to freak each other out with scary stories. Here Henry shows a rare vulnerable side. It turns out that he isn’t quite as tough as he likes to make out. That makes him easy to identify with, and we can all think of someone a little (or a lot) like him. He has a certain charm so that, despite his horridness, we can’t help loving him.

Is Henry a good role model? One mum at the library said that she didn’t like her daughter reading the books because she copied the bad behaviour. But the thing with Henry is that he doesn’t always get away with misbehaving, there are often consequences. So perhaps the books are a good way to chat to would-be Henry’s and Henrietta’s about how being horrid can go horribly wrong.

Funny, loveable and glows in the dark. What more could a kid (however grown-up) want?