Monster Mix & Match

Edward Miller is an illustrator, book designer, art director, and author. Over his thirty-year career, Edward has illustrated over one hundred children’s books for major publishers including Scholastic, Holiday House, HarperCollins, and Harry N. Abrams. He has illustrated a successful math series written by David A. Adler and has written a few books of his own that cover topics such as dental hygiene, fire safety, and health. Edward was an art director at Knopf/Random House. He designed and art-directed 100’s of books, including treasuries of works by Maurice Sendak, Ludwig Bemelmans, Erza Jack Keats, and Robert McCloskey. Edward has done a variety of illustration projects, including greeting cards, murals, puzzles, and fabrics. He is a graduate of Parsons School of Design with a BFA degree in Illustration. He grew up on Long Island, lived in New York City, and now resides in Beacon, NY.

It doesn't have to be Halloween to have a great time hanging out with the ten spooky (silly) characters in this very engaging book. Vinny the Vampire, Seasick Simon, and Werewolf Willie are a few of the alliteratively named monsters young readers will encounter. Each has their own outfits, but movable flaps allow for mixing and matching the costumes. Children may erupt into hysterical fits of joyful laughter when they see Frankie Frankenstein wearing a pink tutu or Werewolf Willie in pink, fuzzy slippers. The combinations are many, and all are fun and colorful, encouraging vocabulary enhancement along the way. Among the clothing items are groovy pants, fuzzy slippers, and cowboy boots. The monsters appear in an eerie graveyard and at the bottom of the sea. Besides its playful aspects, this book can also be used for color identification. The characters whose names do not start with blends allow for teaching both uppercase letter identification and the sound associated with the letter. There is much to be gained by sharing this book with a young child besides spooky, silly fun!