Beware the Tickle Monster! Craig Yoe and Aaron Zenz

Get ready for giggles and wiggles as you sit down to read Beware the Tickle Monster! with your totz!

Author Craig Yoe encourages the reader not to be worried about cyclops, dragons, or trolls. Do be worried about the "four-eyed, three-horned, little, furry tickle monster!" With alliteration and assonance that build, your child will be anticipating that last spread where he "gets you!"

Aaron Zenz does a wonderful job creating these characters in a way that they remain playful and fun, rather than frightening. This is not an easy task! The softer palatte and round shapes help achieve this end, as well as the delicate hatching and cross hatching.

Each page presents a parent and child monster. The center spread of the boogiemen is just hilarious!

The added feature of a hole cut through the entire book takes the interactivity to another level. You and your totz can wiggle your fingers though the holes and see how your additions become dragon tails, monster horns, or things that might come out of a boogeyman's nose!

Beware the Tickle Monster! is a fun read that will be requested again and again. Check out this most excellent review by Aaron's children.

Beware the Tickle Monster
by Craig Yoe
illustrated by Aaron Zenz
Running Press, 2009

April Pick for the Older Sibling: Aaron Zenz's the HICCUPotamus

There was a hippopotamus
Who hiccupped quite-a-lotamus.
And every time he got’emus. . .
. . . He’d fall upon his bottomus.

Wordplay is one of my favorite things, and it abounds in this clever picture book by author-illustrator, Aaron Zenz. When hippopotamus gets hiccups, his friends employ various “helpful” methods of assisting him to overcome them. (His friends include a yellow elephant, and a rhinoceros using dental flosserous.)

After much hilarity as well as trial and error, hippo is finally cured. And then. Hic! Hic! Hic! His friends come down with cases of hiccups themselves as shown in this page, rendered in Prismacolor pencil:

















Inside Scoop:
Multi-talented Aaron Zenz has worked as a fine artist, graphic designer, multimedia designer, and illustrator. He’s also the author of one of my favorite blogs, Bookie Woogie, which he creates with his children. It's a VERY entertaining format which provides an informative view of what kids really think and say about books as they're reading them.

the HICCUPotamus
Aaron Zenz, author-illustrator
Marshall Cavendish Children's Books (September 2009)
(Previously publication by Dogs In Hats, 2005)

~ Joan Holub, author