The Merit of Monsters

Recently a 4 year old known well to me announced that she did not want to sit on the top deck of the bus because there were goblins up there. I agreed. Of course I told her I had seen them myself, and that this (and the fact we only had one stop to go) was a good enough reason to stay on the bottom deck. The following week, when driving near to the Welsh mountains, the very same 4 year old agreed with her 7 year old sister that there were indeed dragons hiding behind the peaks and that if you looked closely, you would see a tail poking out. The 7 year old when back at home, as usual, asked for both the wardrobe doors to be closed, so the monsters could stay inside. After shutting both doors tightly and asking the monsters to politely, but firmly, leave our house, I then hung our cloth calendar around both handles, ensuring that even the strongest monster would not be able to break through, even if he so desired.

Apart from this being a snippet into the fictional world that inhabits my daily life, I regale these tales to illustrate the need for monsters and make-believe creatures in our children’s worlds. It would seem that we need an element of fear in our everyday lives – albeit a fear that is put there ourselves in order to make us revel in our safeness. Interestingly, there has been much debate of late of whether our fairy tales, myths and pantomimes are too dark; the murderous scenes being held up as too frightening for young minds to digest, but within these tales there are also heroic characters, some almost too good to be true one may argue, and without both types of characters there would be no stories at all.

The same goes for monsters in stories. Not only do they give us a safe outlet for our fears to manifest themselves, but they serve the purpose of being able to highlight the worth of another character. Commonly represented as large creatures with oversized feet, bellies and teeth, they can be portrayed as comical within their size or stature (The Ravenous Beast, The Gruffalo) and this only makes them look like fools, when outwitted by smaller creatures. Often their gruesome appearance makes us believe they are scarier than they really are, and there is a revealing to the reader of a creature who only wanted to be loved, such is the case in Chris Wormell’s ‘The Big Ugly Monster and the Little Stone Rabbit’. There are also stories where it is unclear whether the monsters actually exist or not, (A Monster Calls, Not Now, Bernard, Where the Wild Things Are) and as readers we are left wondering whether they were in the mind of one of the characters, or whether the character of a monster served as a metaphor for something else happening within the book.

Monsters are not just reserved for children’s literature of course, Greek mythology provided us with the Minotaur, as well as Medusa and Scylla. With the Hobbit now in cinemas, we will have another generation of teenagers experiencing the fantasy creatures of Middle Earth and growing up with the cleverness and elegance of Smaug the Magnificent, or the dark and earthy giant spiders of the enchanted Mirkwood Forest.

The fascination with monsters is well and truly embedded within our literary culture. Here are some of our own favourite monster books:

Morris the Mankiest Monster, Sarah McIntere and Giles Andrae
The Gruffalo, Julia Donaldson
Love Monster, Rachel Bright
Not now Bernard, David McKee
Two Monsters, David McKee
Fungus the Bogeyman Raymond Briggs
Jake Cake: The Football Beast, Michael Broad
Where the Wild Things Are, Maurice Sendak
Bedtime for Monsters, Ed Vere
The Day Louis Got Eaten, John Fardell
The Ravenous Beast, Niamh Sharkey
A Monster Calls, Patrick Ness
Monstersaurous,Clare Freedman
The Big Ugly Monster and the Little Stone Rabbit, Chris Wormell
Yuck! That’s not a Monster! Angela Mcallister
The Monster Bed by Jeanne Willis and Susan Varley
Monsters: An Owner’s Guide by Jonathon Emmett