Your Pal Mo Willems presents Leonardo the terrible Monster

A big part of my job involves recommending books to teachers, to students, to parents and to colleagues so when someone actually recommends a book to ME I am always keen to get my hands on the book in question and that is how I found Your Pal Mo Willems presents Leonardo the terrible monster.

There seem to have been a huge number of terrific monster books in recent years. Pog by Lyn Lee is an absolute favourite of mine and I have to say Leonardo is certainly just as good.

Leonardo wants to be a scary monster but he is a dismal failure. When he compares himself with other fabulous monsters he just falls short. Until he hits upon the ingenious idea of finding the most scaredy-cat kid in the whole world so he can “scare the tuna salad out of him.” I think I will adopt this expression next time I have to deal with a senior student with very overdue library books!

Leonardo finds Sam – the perfect candidate for this plan – but of course things don’t quite work out as expected. The bold, capital letter text and simple naive illustrations just add to the charm of this very special book