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What child (and this applies to many adults too!) isn’t afraid of dark things that go bump in the night. This beautifully illustrated picture-book introduces us to Nick, a chubby four year old boy, and his visitor, a shadow monster that comes to feed in his room at night. In a charming twist, our shadow monster is also a “child”, and he has been raised by his shadow-monster-mom to fear humans, and what they might do to him. From the shadow monsters perspective, humans are the scary ones, and this little monster must hide at night to make sure he is not discovered (and harmed).

Managing to give Nick and his mom the slip, the shadow monster finally gets a chance to feed under Nick’s bed. With a detail that is sure to delight children everywhere, this monster feeds on smelly human-boy-socks (so that’s where all those stray socks disappear to!) – the smellier the better.

I won’t give the ending completely away, except to say that Nick and the shadow-monster-boy by now have discovered they really are much more alike than different, and neither one need fear the other at all. The message is clear – even young children will immediately understand the idea that we fear what we don’t know, and there’s always another perspective we can take with more information that will help round out sharp edges.

I loved this little book and would recommend it to monster-shy children everywhere.

A big thank you to the author for an E-ARC to review of this book which will shortly be published. All thoughts presented are my own.