Love Monster by Rachel Bright

Love Monster lives in a world filled with soft and cuddly pastel animals and everyone loves them.  But no one loves a red, googly-eyed monster who isn’t so cute.  So Love Monster decides to head out and see if he can find someone who will love him despite not being cuddly.  Love Monster searches and searches for someone like this.  He even thinks he’s found them, but then discovers that he has not.  He’s just about to give up, but learns some things are worth working hard to find.

Bright does an admirable job of creating a book that has a very large message without it consuming the story too much.  She uses a narrator voice that is strong and individual which helps keep the book from becoming to sweet as well.  Love Monster is a great character, primarily because he isn’t a complainer and refuses to just settle for a life alone.

Bright’s art is bight and large.  Love Monster pops against each pastel page with the pages getting darker colored as the story progresses.  Finally, night has fallen and the stars come out in a black sky and Love Monster pops there too.

Monsters and love, sounds like a great Valentine’s Day book for little monsters.  Appropriate for ages 3-5.

Reviewed from copy received from Farrar, Straus and Giroux.