Sad Monster, Glad Monster

There are seven emotions that are highlighted - each has a mask (a perforated page that you tear out) as well as 3-4 examples of what happens when the monster is glad/sad/silly/angry/scared/etc.

Each mask has eye-holes and a nose hole which my 4 and 2 year old kids really like.

There is a "storage pocket" in the back of the book so you can keep all of the masks in there. The thing is that it's only barely large enough to fit them so it's a pretty tight fit.

Note that one page has a scared monster who says that he's afraid of what may be under his bed. I didn't really like that because my kids are not (yet) afraid of that and i don't want to give them ideas. Might have to skip that part of the story next time i read it.

My kids LOVE this book and want to read it over and over (disclaimer: we just received it a day ago so who knows if the love will fade in a few days). I personally am not fond of the story - it's pretty boring in my opinion.

I thought it would help my older guy handle his emotions a bit better but I don't think it does that at all.

As a pediatric speech-language pathologist, I was disappointed with this book and feel it may not be helpful to children, especially younger preschoolers, who already may have developed fears. Although the idea behind the book makes some sense, the masks are scary at first and those children with shorter attention spans may not be able to get past the scary to happy/not scary ideas. I think older children may understand the book's presentation better.

Yellow monsters, green monsters, purple monsters-They all have feelings. Sometimes they are happy about birthday presents and other times they are worried by seeing little creepy-crawly things. This is a book to help children put the right words and faces to the emotions they are feeling or are seeing in others.

The colors in this book are wonderful. All the story pages are black and glossy with bright, multi-colored pictures. Children will be drawn to the fun monsters and their explanations for their current emotions. Each emotion comes with a child-sized mask that can be torn out and used. There is a wonderful pocket inside the back cover to store the masks.

Colorful, cute, educational and entertaining, Glad Monster, Sad Monster will make a great gift book.

Armchair Interviews agrees.

The book is thirty pages long in dark black pages with bright happy and sad colorful faces with two holes for the eyes and the larger shape opening for the nose. In the front of the book is the diagram that explains the steps to use the flaps. A child who is not yet able to read will know how to follow these self-explanatory steps with cute pictures. First the book gets opened with the flap being lifted, read the text and try on the mask while pretending to have fun!

This is a fun and imaginative book that can be utilized alone by a child to experiment with the faces or masks depending on what they want to call them. You can involve more than one child and adult and use the colors to interact with other toys to pick which feeling they are.