Naughty Naughty Monster
Kaye Umansky and Greg Abbott
Templar Publishing
This is utterly delicious: from the moment I set eyes on that monster grinning at me from the book’s cover I was ensnared. The thing is though, he’s – as we’re told from the outset – a monster of the naughty naughty kind. Forget kind – he’s the one and only Naughty Naughty Monster and he has the woodland creatures shivering and shaking in their holes when he’s peckish and on the rampage. Not so one particular Fairy however –

looks pretty sweet I agree, but not when she’s riled and she is – on account of the NNM. “I am sending you straight back home again./ Be off! Back to your cave!/ And don’t you dare come out/ Until you’ve learned how to behave.” she tells him. This instruction, the NNM ignores completely and continues rampaging, through the farmyard causing terror therein until the Fairy arrives on the scene. She calms the frenzied animals but not the NNM who ignores her “… back into your cave until you learn to be polite” order and proceeds down the street, alarming , nay terrorising, the children with his dustbin kicking and acting tough.

And that’s when the ‘goody-goody’ Fairy finally goes crazy. She sends him into his cave and blocks the entrance (and of course, the monster’s exit) with ‘a great big, heavy stone’ leaving him to stew  and ponder on his wicked ways, for try as he might, no matter how hard he shoves and thumps, the NNM cannot shift the stone, not one little bit. Is that a tiny tear I spy being shed by the creature here …

Days pass, a lot of thinking gets done and finally the Monster sees the error of his ways, grabs pen and paper and writes …

A helpful bird delivers the letter, the Fairy – now happy – reads it, considers, has doubts but decides one more chance is the order of the day. The NNM is released from his solitary confinement and … ‘The Naughty Naughty Monster went rampaging through the wood … ‘

Surely after all that, the Fairy wasn’t wrong in letting him out, was she?
Kaye Umansky’s rhyming text simply rocks: it’s perfectly paced, marvellously mischievous and reads aloud like a dream. In combination with newcomer Greg Abbott’s superb scenes of mischief, mayhem and a winsome monster, the result is pure picture book pleasure.

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