Drooling At Commercials

One of the books that I truly enjoy re-reading to Alexander is one written by Susan Heyboer O'Keefe and illustrated by Lynn Munsinger. It is called One Hungry Monster: A Counting Book in Rhyme.

We own the board book version of it.

This is a wonderful little counting exercise about a boy who wakes up to discover that the house is riddled with hungry monsters. The rhymes are fun, the counting is wonderfully worked into the rhymes without being overbearing, and the story it tells is cute and funny.

The book opens with: "One hungry monster, underneath my bed, moaning and groaning and begging to be fed." The story continues on to two monsters and so on in a catchy and fun to follow manner, all the way up to 10. The rhymes are cute and playful and stick in your head nicely. There are some days when I'll recite the book while walking around and have to catch myself in public and make sure I'm not reciting it aloud.

In fact, I'll often sit and read this aloud, even after Alexander is asleep, that's how much I like it.

So many of the rhymes in this book are fun and delightful to read (yes, even for the hundredth time), but one of my very favourite parts is the number seven, when there are:

"Seven hungry monsters
'round our TV screen
drooling at commercials
for sauerkraut and beans"

Sauerkraut and beans! Gotta love it! The perfect meal for messy little monsters.

I'll be needing to go out and buy a new copy of the board book pretty soon, because our version of it is practically worn out.

Actually, I just noticed this while looking for a link to this book on Amazon, but it looks like there is also a Hungry Monster A B C book by the same writer/illustrator team. And it looks like it just came out in June. Woo hoo!

All right! I know what the next book I'll be buying is.