If you could turn into anything, what would you be?!

Monster Max and the Bobble Hat of Forgetting

Published by Firefly Press and released into the wild on 18th February 2021

Paperback: £5.99

ISBN: 9781913102333

Pages: 187

By Robin Bennett

Twitter: @writer_robin

Illustrated by Tom Tinn-Disbury

https://www.tomtinndisbury.com/

https://www.monstermax.co.uk/

Published by Firefly Press

http://www.fireflypress.co.uk

Twitter: @fireflypress

Under 100 characters summary:

Max (monster/boy) crashes around his town destroying stuff until a heart-to-heart with his dad turns him into an unusual hero!

The first line:

This is Max.

The key characters:

Max

Frankenstein (Max’s cat)

Max’s dad

Max’s mum

Peregrine (his neighbour)

The Grimp

What do you need to know?

What a great idea: a boy that can turn himself into a monster with a burp and back into a boy with a sneeze! I can see this turning into a series and the children of Years 3 and 4 enjoying all the fart and poo jokes! The premise behind the story is a good one – Max at first is just having fun being a monster, but then, with a little guidance from his dad, he uses his abilities for good.

My review:

I personally didn’t feel like I was taken into the Max’s world enough and only really started to enjoy the story about halfway through when there was a clear plot, but I can see why the author chose to focus on introducing the monster first.

I liked finding out more about the mysterious country of Krit, where Max’s mum comes from. And, on this note, if you visit the website which goes alongside the book (www.monstermax.co.uk) there is a cool video of the ‘Mountain of Krit’, and other fantastic resources.

Along the way in the story, Max gets distracted by Peregrine, a local boy, who develops into a great character, and I enjoyed the dialogue between the two at the end of the story.

The short chapters are perfect for this age and the illustrations help to bring the story to life. I would enjoy using these with the children in school to create our own set of monsters that we all turn into and see what good we could do around our own town!

I look forward to seeing what happens in the next book!

Thank you to the UKLA’s 4-11 magazine for the copy and a shorter version of this review may appear in there some day.