Boo! Even Monsters Need Haircuts by Matthew M. Elligott

MY DAD IS A BARBER.

I LIKE TO WATCH HIS WORK.

I'M A BARBER, TOO.

TONIGHT WILL BE A FULL MOON.

Ever wonder how vampires keep their pompadours so perfect? Well, even monsters have to do something with their hair now and then. And for that trip to the barbershop, there's always the night of the full moon and their personal tonsorial specialist.

In Mathhew McElligott's latest, Even Monsters Need Haircuts (Walker, 2010), our hero is a young barber who arises in the dark and takes the midnight bat down to his dad's barber shop to take care of his monster customers:

SOME CUSTOMERS ARE EASY.

SOME ARE MORE DIFFICULT.

SOME ALWAYS GET THE SAME THING.

SOME ALWAYS WANT TO TRY SOMETHING NEW.

AND FOR SOME CUSTOMERS IT'S HARD TO KNOW WHAT THEY WANT.

Frankenstein's monster gets his customary flattop buzz. No sweat there. But shaggy werewolves clog the clippers. And then there's Medusa--she's what you call a difficult client. It takes a tall stool and a good blindfold to braid her dreadlocks. Does she like her do? Don't look. Take her word for it! And the skeletons? There's no hair there to trim! Maybe a little, er, hair restorer?

But the scariest ding-dong at the door is a surprise client--an ordinary human being. The barbershop buddies go silent as they stare in disbelief.

"Can you take a little off at the top?" the man asks mildly.

But then he nonchalantly reaches up and lifts off his head and hands it to the young barber. Relief floods the clip joint as the customers relax, realizing he's one of them after all.

It's all in good fun, and young readers will have a monster ball perusing the clientele of this midnight tonsorial parlor, executed whimsically by McElligott in mixed media, digitally enhanced. His PJ-clad young barber wears his monster-feet slippers and provides his own pocket-sized shamp-ewww, as he narrates this witty story of a barber who does his own comic version of moonlighting.

"SEE YOU NEXT MONTH!"