Happy Book Birthday, Travel Guide for Monsters by Lori Degman!

TRAVEL GUIDE FOR MONSTERS

by Lori Degman

Illustrated by Dave Szalay

Sleeping Bear Press

Picture Book 

32 pages

ages 4 to 8

When traveling with monsters on a trip across the nation, this guide will give you tips to have a marvelous vacation!

This helpful guide for traveling with your gigantic, fuzzy monster friends is sure to yield some serious laughs. Whether traveling to the Grand Canyon, Mount Rushmore, an amusement park, or major city, this guide shares important tips for all your travels. For example, don't let your monster friend drink from the geysers at Yellowstone, or boogie board on Niagara Falls. An entertaining story highlights our nations' monuments, parks, cities and famous vacation spots, making it the perfect book to bring along on a family vacation or to teach kids about the United States.

    

MY TIDBITS

Monsterly fun meets the USA in a silly, rhyming adventure, perfect for traveling in an unexpected way.

It's time to go on a vacation, and these monsters can't wait. They start in California and stop at thirteen more, well-known tourist attractions and cities as they make their way across the USA. Each stop is short but enough to give a quick impression...and a bit of silliness...before the monsters move on.

The idea of monsters hitting some favorite vacation spots in the US already had me looking forward to this read. And these monsters a quite the treat. Packed with imagination, each one is illustrated with a touch of fantasy, quirkiness and dash of humorous fun. It's fun to see their reactions as well as their antics as they visit well-known spots.

A four-line rhyme introduces and highlights a main aspect of each of the places the monsters visit. These are worded just right for the intended age group. The name of the state is placed in the corner of the page...unfortunately, the depicted place is sometimes a bit more difficult to figure out, but usually, the name can be found somewhere in the illustration. The places are drawn in a way, young listeners can recognize and get a general idea of the real appearance. At the very end, there is a map to help trace the journey

The monster antics are the real treat in this book, and it's this aspect which will have young listeners coming back again and again. As to the travel information, there is a nice variety of types of locations and activities. These do give a lovely and very general impression of the visited sites. It would have been nice to have a tiny bit more information on some, since I'm not sure young readers will easily identify many of these or necessarily known anything about them. But it is a lovely introduction. The monsters make this one worth more than one read through.



And here they are...

The Author...
Lori Degman's children's books include Norbert's Big Dream. She has a master's degree in early childhood education and lives in a  suburb of Chicago, Illinois.

The Illustrator...

Dave Szalay is an illustrator, teacher, and graphic designer. He lives in Richfield, Ohio, near the Cuyahoga Valley National Park.

Review: Just Read! by Lori Degman

JUST READ!

by Lori Degman

Illustrated by Victoria Tentler-Krylov

Sterling Children's Books

Picture Book

32 pages

ages 4 to 8

Learning to read is a big accomplishment, and this exuberant picture book celebrates reading in its many forms. In lively rhyme, it follows a diverse group of word-loving children who grab the opportunity to read wherever and whenever they can. They read while waiting and while sliding or swinging; they read music and in Braille and the signs on the road. And, sometimes, they even read together, in a special fort they’ve built. The colorful, fanciful art and rollicking text will get every child more excited about reading!

MY TIDBITS

Just Read! is a celebration of reading, which demonstrates that reading can be done anywhere, everywhere, and invites fantasy in even the most unlikely places.

The title sums up the book nicely. Every page is dedicated to the act of reading, and young listeners are taken through a colorful and exciting display of how versatile reading can be. Following a gentle rhyme, the text flows in an easy to understand way, while still making the situations clear. The locations where a book can be read are almost as vast as the imagination—in a place, in the grocery store, in secret code or in the rain.

The illustrations are my favorite part of this book. They are vibrant and bring every scene to life. There are tons of details, both realistic and humorous. They invite for flipping through and exploring on their own, and still bring across the main message along the way.

There's no shying away from the message in these pages—read. This makes it a lovely book to read aloud to classrooms, library readings or other groups of kids, since it does inspire reading and show demonstrate how wonderful and fun it can be.

And here they are...

The Author...
Lori Degman is the author of 1 Zany Zoo (Simon & Schuster), Cack-a-Doodle Oops! (Creston Books), Norbert's Big Dream (Sleeping Bear Press), and the upcoming Like a Girl (Sterling). Lori was a teacher of deaf and hard-of-hearing students and is now a full-time author. She lives near Chicago, IL and is available for interviews. Follow her on Twitter at @loriDegman.

The Illustrator...

Victoria Tentler-Krylov's artwork has been published by Pink Giraffe Books in Russia and by Spider magazine The Wall Street Journal, The Boston Globe, and Flutter Magazine in the US. Visit Victoria online at cargocollective.com/victoriakrylov