Reviews

What Makes a Monster?: Discovering the World's Scariest Creatures by Jess Keating, David DeGrand

shighley's review against another edition

4.0

A great way for students to learn while enjoying themselves. I could have done without humans as monsters.

readingthroughtheages's review against another edition

5.0

Jess Keating has certainly made reading nonfiction animal books totally cool.

little_silver's review against another edition

4.0

The great photos and theme of these World of Weird Animals books will surely make them winners with kiddos looking for interesting animal NF. Adding a star for the final entry!

aazak127's review against another edition

4.0

Highly recommended! Points right away for having an aye aye on the cover. This book is full of fascinating animal facts, some which blew my mind (Horror frogs?!?! Those assassin bugs?!?!) The best part, however, is the end of the book when Keating challenges readers to consider what makes a monster. Are these adaptations that help unique species survive really all that monstrous? And can't we humans be quite monstrous ourselves???

skundrik87's review against another edition

4.0

This series is so good for middle school. Just enough gross stuff to be interesting but broken into easily readable chunks of text with huge pictures and illustrations.

kslhersam's review against another edition

4.0

Great non-fiction picture book for kids. I learned a ton myself just reading through it. Nice colorful pictures and easy format to read information.

olivias's review against another edition

4.0

Jess Keating is great. I'm a sucker for interesting animals, especially animals with cool dangerous abilities! I know a lot about animals, and even I wasn't familiar with most of these. Beautiful photos, great layout, super readable. I'd be happy if this wins for Silver Birch nonfiction this year :) I love that she included humans as a monstrous creature, but my favourite non-human animal in this book is a tie, between the prairie dog with the big fat belly (why are they monstrous? better read the book!) and the humboldt squid.

bethmitcham's review

4.0

Fun pictures of various scary critters, with descriptions and science information (habitat etc) in various sized fonts so you can easily tailor the reading to the audience (or child readers can choose how much to decipher). The theme itself is a bit wobbly -- the title encourages branding these animals as monsters, but then at the end the author feels bad and tries to pull that back.