BOOKS

This Is the House That Monsters Built

by Steve METZGER
illus. by Jared D. Lee. 32p. Scholastic/Cartwheel. Jul. 2016. Tr $9.99. ISBN 9780545611121.
COPY ISBN
K-Gr 2—"The House That Jack Built" gets a remodel when monsters, including a vampire, a ghost, a mummy, a witch, a black cat, a black widow spider, bats, and Frankenstein, move in. Although reminiscent of the source material, this has a definite Halloween bent. The mummy raises a wall. The werewolf puts in a door. The skeleton nails down the floor. The witch is cooking her "brew." The zombie screams, and the ghost shouts "boo!" This causes the bats to fly about. Of course, all of this action is in rhyme. The characters in the brightly colored illustrations possess varying degrees of scariness, though the spider's markings are more artistically drawn than those that would be found in a field guide. The spread showing the ghost shouting "boo!" is especially effective in its creepiness.
VERDICT A great choice for a primary grade Halloween storytime.
Reviewed by Elaine Lesh Morgan, formerly at Multnomah County Library, Portland, OR
"This is the werewolf who put in a door, / That stopped the spider who started to crawl, / That shocked the mummy who raised the wall, / Inside the house that monsters built." Using a "House That Jack Built" structure, this book describes how various witches, vampires, and ghosts contribute to the (shoddy) construction of a "spooky" house, and the resultant chaos when trick-or-treaters come to the door. The monsters, it turns out, are as bad at being scary as they are at building a house. There's good read-aloud potential here (although it requires practice; the verse's meter is frequently challenging), and the pen-and-ink illustrations are frenetically funny. martha v. parravano
Using a "House That Jack Built" structure, this book describes how various witches, vampires, and ghosts contribute to the (shoddy) construction of a "spooky" house, and the resultant chaos when trick-or-treaters come to the door. There's good read-aloud potential here (although the verse's meter may require practice), and the pen-and-ink illustrations are frenetically funny.
 , Sep 01, 2016

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