If Your Monster Won’t Go to Bed
by Denise Vega; illus. by Zachariah OHora
Primary    Knopf    40 pp.
3/17    978-0-553-49655-0    $17.99
Library ed.  978-0-553-49656-7    $20.99    g
e-book ed.  978-0-553-49657-4    $10.99

In tongue-in-cheek direct-address text, Vega provides children with an entertaining manual for putting unruly monsters to sleep: “Let’s review a bedtime routine guaranteed to help any monster drift off into peaceful nightmare-land.” She starts with the don’ts: don’t ask your parents for help (they’re useless with monsters); don’t suggest counting sheep (they’re too tasty); no warm milk (unless it’s rotten, but that would keep the monster up all night “burping sour, green, dirty-underwear-smelling-burps — and who wants that…?”). The do list includes slimy bedtime bug juice, an ice-cold bath, and a scary story. It works, and soon the monster is snoring. OHora’s thick-lined illustrations — listed on the copyright page as “acrylic paint on 140-lb. BFK Rives printing paper. You read that right, just old-school paint on paper” — show a brown-skinned girl (her mom is African American, her dad is white) bossing around a large, rainbow-sherbet-hued, non-scary monster. The little girl’s reputation precedes her: the story ends with a line down the street of neighborhood kids seeking her monster-whispering services.

From the March/April 2017 issue of The Horn Book Magazine.