Maurice the Unbeastly by Amy Dixon and Karl James Mountford (Sterling)

Not all monsters are scary, clumsy bloodthirsty slobbering fiends...! Let's meet a nice one for a change!
"Maurice the Unbeastly" by Amy Dixon and Karl James Mountford is an utterly charming little book.

We completely fell in love with this tale of a distinctly different monster. Most monsters are content with being truly beastly, in fact Maurice's parents are a pair of terrors. But Maurice is a bit more gentle than that.

He's kind, considerate, wonderfully photogenic (and we can definitely vouch for that, C's sighs of how cute Maurice is were quite amusing!) and not at all the terrible fiend that monsters in other books are.

Of course this just won't do. Monsters are supposed to be, well, monstrous. So Maurice is packed off to The Abominable Academy for Brutish Beasts.

Maurice falls foul of the teachers and the head on the very first day. His voice is too soft, he's hopeless at lumbering around creating havoc, and he definitely needs to do something about his appallingly healthy diet.

But there's a neat twist here, as Maurice soon finds that once you're happy with who you are, no one can take that away from you - and your core loveliness may just come in handy at Monster School after all.

We love the charm and the inventiveness of this. It's a story with a beautiful core message, and it has the most amazingly gorgeous artwork too.

A real winner from Amy and Karl.



C's best bit: Monster dinner times, ew!

Daddy's favourite bit: Such a lovely character, a real nice change from the usual slobbering lumbering monsters we see in stories, and such a wonderful core message here too.

"Maurice the Unbeastly" by Amy Dixon and Karl James Mountford is out now, published by Sterling (kindly supplied for review).