#11 If You're a Monster and You Know it

Title: If you’re a Monster and You Know it

Author: Rebecca Emberley and Ed Emberley

Illustrator: Rebecca Emberley

Publishing Company: Orchard Books

Copyright Date: 2010

# of Pages: 31

Genre/Category: Poetry

     I chose this book because I thought the name of it was cute. I also liked the way the cover looked. It is a remix of the song “If you’re Happy and You know it.” The poem has the same beat and rhythm as the song that all children already know.  It uses monsters and monster body parts instead of human ones to do the actions. Children are asked to do things such as snort and growl, smack their claws, and roar.

           

            The illustrations were made using freehand. It looked to me like construction paper cut out into small pieces and pieced together like a collage though. The illustrations are all done with a black background, and most of the monsters are made using intense warm colors. I really liked that some of the text was very informal.  I also noticed that the illustrator did not use any type of outline on her illustrations, and she used jagged lines on many of the monsters. I felt that all of this helped add to the feeling of a scary monster book.

            I would say this book would be appropriate for children ages 3-6. It repeats itself, so it would be a good book for beginning readers. Teachers could use this book in the classroom to introduce poetry, rhythm, or rhyme. I think it would also be fun to use this book for a “brain break” book. The children could stand up and do the dance with the book. It would also be a good book to use as writing prompt. Students could use adjectives to write about what they would look like if they were a monster. Younger students could write one sentence using the format, “If you’re a monster and you know it…”  This would also be a great interactive way to introduce verbs. Students would “do” the verb, so it would help with their understanding of what a verb is.