Monster Poems
Frankenstein Makes a Sandwich
by Adam Rex

Monstrously funny monster poems

Children's book review by Steve Barancik

Ages 6-10

Adam Rex knows how to cut loose. Frankenstein Makes a Sandwich is what happens when an author-illustrator gives himself permission to have fun. Or maybe I should say, it's what happens when that author-illustrator's publisher gives him permission to have fun.

Reviewers have raved, and the book made it onto the New York Times bestseller list. And that bestseller status is quite an accomplishment because this isn't a book aimed at the wider picture book audience.

No, your child will need:

• a healthy - but somewhat sick - sense of humor
• a fair knowledge of monster lore
• a willingness to read out loud in the interest of making others go, "Eeeewww!"

In other words, this is a book for grade school boys (and their dads). And all the better if they happen to have a taste for late night monster movies.

The titles pretty much say it all...

• The Invisible Man Gets a Haircut (and loses an ear)
• The Creature from the Black Lagoon (Doesn't Wait an Hour Before Swimming)
• The Phantom of the Opera (Can't Get "It's a Small World" Out of His Head)
• The Mummy (Won't Go to His Eternal Rest Without a Story and Some Cookies)
• Count Dracula (Doesn't Know He's Been Walking Around All Night with Spinach in His Teeth)

If you like the titles, you'll love the book. If you're wondering who the heck could set such outlandish concepts to rhyme...

Adam Rex can. And does.

In the titular monster poem, our green hero finds the cupboard bare. So he decides to try the neighbors.

His neighbors gawked
as Frankie walked
the paths up to their porches.

Each time he tried,
the folks inside
would chase him off with torches.

Of course, they also throw rotten food at him, and so...

Frankenstein Makes a Sandwich.

Illustrator Rex has just as much fun with the pictures as author Rex does with the poems about monsters. We've seen Frankenstein many times before, but it took Adam Rex to capture the goofy-faced, kind-hearted, soft-headed simp behind the legend.

When we first see him, we're in that empty cupboard as the befuddled green amalgam of dead people parts looks in and realizes that he doesn't know where his next meal will be coming from.

Poor Frankie, we're thinking. Where's your mommy?

Rex has fun with every aspect of bookmaking. The publisher page with all that dry info about the Library of Congress and this 13 digit number and that dedication?...

Artist Rex arranges all the black print so that the remaining white space defines the shape of a heavenly creature. The italics at the bottom of the page read,

The Invisible Man Makes a Snow Angel, 1897

So if Halloween is the favorite holiday of someone you know, someone who prefers Wolfman to Spiderman (or even Zombies to Barbies), then boy, is this the book of monster poems for you. (To be followed up, of course, with Rex's Frankenstein Takes the Cake.

More Halloween and monster books.

More monster poems for kids on Amazon.

Read more of Steve's children's book reviews.

More poetry books.

Best Children's Books home.