Being the tender-hearted basset hound that I am, I was particularly touched by the emotional range of this story. The climax of the story comes when young Sam, the child Leonardo has tried to scare, starts to cry. Leonardo interprets his tears as fear-based, but the child explains all the things that have gone wrong recently that have driven him to tears. This provides a wonderful opportunity to talk about names for those feelings: Sam is frustrated, overwhelmed, and lonely.
In classic Mo Willems fashion, the story uses natural, conversational language, never "dumbing down" the vocabulary (and providing just enough humor to keep the adult listeners engaged). This story introduces such terms as "research," "candidate," and "unsuspecting," with plenty of context clues within the illustrations and text to help young readers. He also peppers the story with colorful imagery, such as Leonardo's plan to "scare the tuna salad" out of young Sam. School Library Journal agrees that Willems' book has "perfect pacing" and "astutely childlike perceptions," making this picture book "a standout" ("Leonardo the Terrible Monster" 2006). While the intricate, all-caps typeface provides a nice visual contrast to the simplicity of Willems' artistic style, the fancy lettering may make the text harder to read for emergent readers trying to follow along.
Willems is careful to let the pictures do just as much talking as the words. Library Media Connection explains how his "restrained palette of soft grays, blues, greens, and lavenders with deeper purples for emphasis highlights the text" (Glantz and Scordato 2005). He varies the size of the text to indicate volume (softly spoken words are in small print, while words that are yelled are in large print), and the location of the text on each page changes to accommodate the illustrations, emphasizing that they have equal importance in the telling of the story. The text also leads the eye to the action in the picture, sometimes stairstepping down the middle of the page. At the climax of the story, Willems lets the illustrations answer the question of how Leonardo decides to react to a tearful Sam.
If your pup at home is craving more of Leonardo and his pal Sam, look for Willems' companion book Sam, the Most Scaredy-Cat Kid in the World, in which our hero and his little friend meet another unlikely monster-child duo and, of course, hilarity ensues. Leonardo the Terrible Monster would also pair well with The Island of the Skog by Steven Kellogg, a tale that similarly deals with feelings of fear, teaching children that there's no need to be afraid of the unknown, and that the very creature that seems so scary might just be afraid of...you. These stories provide many opportunities to talk about what children are afraid of and how to tackle these fears.
While I had a hard time turning pages with my paws, I was held captivated by the plot, and I (literally) howled with laughter when I realized that Leonardo wasn't called a terrible monster because he was fearsome; he's just terrible at being a monster! I very much enjoyed this story, and it was even good enough to share with the cat (who is a rather picky reader). It's no wonder that this story won the ALA Notable Children's Book award in 2006! Two paws up for Leonardo, the Terrible Monster!
-Charlie Brown, basset hound
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Glantz, Shelley, and Julie Scordato. "Leonardo, the Terrible Monster." Review of Leonardo, the Terrible Monster, by Mo Willems. Library Media Connection 24, no. 3 (November 2005): 62.
"Leonardo, the Terrible Monster." Review of Leonardo, the Terrible Monster, by Mo Willems. School Library Journal 52 (April 2006): 44.
Willems, Mo. Leonardo, the Terrible Monster. New York: Hyperion Books for Children, 2005. ISBN 9780786852949
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