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I remember my mother reading me this book when I was a child. Now I am reading it to my kids, and they LOVE it. I let them turn the pages, and they enjoy seeing how Grover tries to keep you from turning them. Because the closer you get to the end of the book, the closer you get to the "Monster".
This was my sons favourite, I always had to read it to him in Grovers voiceand it is now the younger ones favourite as well.It is so funny to watch Grover prepare, fall apart, prepare again, fall apart again etc., scared of the horrible monster he has heard is at the end of the book.only to find.himself. It is a great, funny, fear calming book.Who wasn't afraid of monsters in the dark as a child.And this illustrates, it is all in ones imagination, so do not be afraid.Grover is silly and cute all the while he is sooo very afraid, which is delightful to all.Excellent book, it is a real classic.
But the question remains. I recently read The Monster at the End of This Book, by Lovable Furry Old Grover. It followed a pretty obvious course through the old cliches of the genre most of the way through, but the ending threw me for a shock that had me catatonic in existential malaise for weeks afterwards.NOTE: DO NOT READ FURTHER IF YOU DO NOT WANT IT TO BE SPOILED.When I found out that the monster in the book was indeed Grover I thought, "My god. However, in the modern and postmodern likelihood of unreliable narration, it seems that it could just of easily been a clever deception by the monster, to lure the reader into his confidence before springing his trap. That "evil has no face" as they say.Ultimately, it brought me to reflect that one may be a monster and not even be full conscious of the fact. it could be any of us." Yes that's right, the narrator of the book, the kindly and gentle guide through this thrill-ride, was indeed the monster of which he spoke.
Or does his twisted logic somehow rationalize his monstrosity and allow it run rampant. I picked it up on a lark, figuring it would by a typical horror/thriller throwaway. Does a monster know he is a monster. This raised many, many questions. It seems from reflection that Grover himself was unaware that he was the monster. Also, if this physically harmless appearance could harbor the monster of the book, doesn't that mean that anyone could be a monster.
That one may be revealed to be monstrous, but only at the end of a mysterious and terrible life of lies.
He'll understand how cruel this all is when he get a bit older. So it turns out that the "monster" is actually the protagonist which, while having shades of postmodern antihero angst that wil reverberate strongly with fans of, say, Kafka or Burroughs, really threw me for a loop as a kid. My two year old, on the other hand, has no problem with this conceit, and wants me to read it to him regularly. Oh yes. In the meantime, I'll read it for him over and over and over and over, and never get tired of it.
At 2 years old the book sat on the shelves for a while, but she is 3 now, and I recently took it down again to read for her at bedtime. When I was little this was my favorite book. It is now a favorite, we read it every night. We would read it over and over, and I would pretend I was struggling to turn the pages that Grover had tied, nailed, and bricked over. So when we had a daughter, this was one of the first books I bought for her. I read the pages, then she turns them to give poor old Grover a hard time.One recommendation.this review is for the standard Little Golden Books version, which is great, but we also found a board book version in stores, so the hard pages are great when you have toddlers turning the pages for you every night. They can really 'struggle' against Grover's efforts without hurting the book.
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