Cut-down: This Monster Needs a Haircut by Bethany Barton

THIS IS STEWART.

STEWART IS A MONSTER.

HE HAS HORNS, AND WILD, MESSY, SCARY HAIR.

And that is the way Stewart likes it. Frightfulness is his forte', and he and his best friend Feliz like nothing better than a day at the zoo, scaring the hair off the hippos, and enlisting spiders to weave spider web castles.

Stewart has horns that a rhino would respect. His long and crooked fangs would turn a dentist's hair the color of his white coat, and his hair--now that is Stewart's specialty!

"I LOVE MY AWESOME HAIR!"

Stewart is sure that his hair is his strongest scare strength, especially when adorned with spiders' nest, lost school supplies, a snack or two--but even a monster mom has limits on her tolerance. Stewart's mom takes his hairbrush (unused so long it has its own spiderwebs) to his tousled tresses, with no success. She pulls out the Mega-Monster Detangler, but the tangles are still more than Mom can manage.

Stewart's dad has the simple answer--a haircut. As an incentive, he shows Stewart a photo brochure of cool cuts--the George Washington, the Punk Rocker, the Elvis--but Stewart is stalwart in defense of his locks.

But at last his green locks outgrow even Stewart's patience. His hair gets so long that it keeps getting caught in the landscape. A troop of monkeys use a length of it for a jump rope! Finally, Stewart is ready to cut a deal over the haircut issue.

"DEAR DAD, MAYBE WE COULD TALK ABOUT THE HAIRCUT A LITTLE BIT. LOVE, STEWART."

Will Stewart the Monster find haircut happiness, or will he wind up wearing a paper bag over his head forever? Find out in Bethany Barton's winsomely illustrated, tongue-in-fang tonsorial saga, This Monster Needs a Haircut (Dial Books, 2012). Barton builds mega-bits of visual humor into her haircut tale (the blackboard at Monster School reads "Homework: Find a human's homework and EAT IT!). Pair this spoof on the scary side of life with Matthew McElligott's hilarious Even Monsters Need Haircuts (see my review here) for a monster tonsorial twofer that'll have kids giggling as they hippity-hop to the barbershop.

Bad Hair Day: Eva and Sadie and the Worst Haircut Ever by by Jeff Cohen

WHEN I FINISHED, I LOOKED DOWN AT THE PILE OF HAIR ON THE FLOOR...
AND THAT'S WHEN THINGS WENT TERRIBLY WRONG.

"SADIE, ARE YOU SURE YOU KNOW WHAT YOU ARE DOING?" ASKED EVA.

Standing in the bathroom with Mom's sewing scissors, with a pile of her little sister's blond curls around her feet, Sadie realizes that it might not have been a great idea to give Eva's wild hair a little trim.

It was wild. Eva's hair is lush and has grown down to her tush. It's whirly and twirly, hurly-burly, and way too curly. Her waves work their way out of Mom's tightest braids. Her curly mop escapes from hair thingies, bounces out of barrettes, overwhelms headbands, and brushing only makes it frizzier. Something clearly needed to happen. And Big Sis Sadie, in her sensible brown bob, thinks she knows just what Eva's coiffure calls for.

But now Sadie realizes that Eva's mane is more that she can manage.

SOME PARTS ARE SHORT, AND SOME PARTS ARE LONG.

"THIS IS BAD, BAD BAD!"

BUT EVA LIKES IT.

Sadie knows that she's crossed the haircut Rubicon at this point, in Jeff Cohen's new Eva and Sadie and the Worst Haircut EVER! (HarperCollins, 2014). The impromtu haircut (by sister, best friend, or selfie) is almost a rite of passage of childhood, and Jeff Cohen's comic account of Sadie's growing panic as she feverishly snips and snips to try to even out Eva's haircut, along with Elanna Evans' sympathetic illustrations of the big sister and her complicit little sister, makes for an easy-going finish to this all too common story. Pair this one with the boy-pleasing [ { THIS MONSTER NEEDS A HAIRCUT } ] by Barton, Bethany (AUTHOR) Jul-05-2012 [ Hardcover ] by Bethany Barton.

Can't Hesitate: This Monster Cannot Wait by Bethany Barton

STEWART'S PARENTS ARE TAKING HIM CAMPING FOR THE VERY FIRST TIME.

"IT'S GOING TO BE SO MUCH FUN!

I ABSOLUTELY CAN'T WAIT!"

If everybody's waitin' for the weekend, Stewart is at the top of the list. He's over the moon excited, and can't stand the anticipation. To heck with hesitation!! Stewart wants it to happen NOW!

Impetuous preschooler Stewart just knows that there must be something he can do to speed up time. He sets the clocks ahead. He turns the calendar page. His parents just point out that those things mark time, but they aren't the same as time.

Stewart even tries building a super-duper time machine, but it seems that time is still stubbornly standing still.

"AW, MAN!"

Then Stewart has a radical idea. Hoping that the last page of this book will conclude with him and his family at their campsite, he decides that he'll shorten all the parts in between.  Maybe if he just, um, "removes" the next page or two....  RIPPP!

But this time Stewart's parents are way ahead of him, sternly handing him the tape and pointing out that he can't change time that way either. Stewart is just going to have to wait for the final page along with the rest of the usreaders.

At school Stewart takes hope from all the end-of-school activities. But his classmate Felicia is not happy.  She is already sad that she will miss all her friends during school vacation!

"YOU'RE SO WORRIED ABOUT NEXT WEEK, THAT YOU'RE MISSING RIGHT NOW!" he points out.

Aw, Man!   Stewart suddenly realizes that he's been doing the same thing! Maybe he can wait after all.

In Bethany Barton's second book about her impulsive young monster, This Monster Cannot Wait! (Dial Books, 2013) Stewart learns that anticipation is part of the pleasure in waiting for a big event. With his wild monster mouth and unruly hair, Barton's comic character, who made his debut in This Monster Needs a Haircut (see review here) reflects the monster in all those impatient preschoolers who just can't wait!

The Hair Makes the Man: Super Hairo and the Barber of Doom

EVERY SUPERHERO GETS HIS POWERS FROM SOMEWHERE.

MY POWER COMES FROM MY HAIR.

THE MORE MY HAIR GROWS, THE MORE AWESOME MY POWERS BECOME.

Superman may have had his kryptonite, but this young hero's superpowers come from his head.  Not from his brain, exactly, but from his hair--a truly impressive, bushy, reddish superfro that make all his feats of daring possible.  Along with his mega-hirsute followers, all sprouting massive mops, Rocco and his superfriends  accomplish feats of  strength and derring-do that impress all the kids in the neighborhood, especially that one interesting girl who quietly watches each awesome skateboard  jump or BMX bike leap.

But every superhero has his nemesis: Superman has The Joker, and young Rocco has ... The Barber of Doom.  

Faster than a speeding bullet, his traitorous parents nab Rocco, and off he goes to the villain's lair, where the Barber of Doom has his way with his hopelessly snarled mane. When Superhero emerges from his shearing a hapless hero, shorn of the source of his strength, he just knows that his super powers are history. Super Hairo is now Wimpy Baldo.

But that girl has a way to restore his powers.  An artful emergency is staged,  her Teddy bear is stranded far above the ground, and our sheared hero and his band of superdudes take the bait and answer the call to action.

POWER SURGED THROUGH US, AND WE SPRANG INTO ACTION!

It's hair today and gone tomorrow for this pint-sized superhero and his minions, who find out that their powers are all in their heads--but not in their hair, in this spoof of the Samson complex, John Rocco's Super Hair-o and the Barber of Doom (Hyperion, 2013). Masterful page design gives this superhero tale its pizzazzy prowess. Using comic-book dot-printing technique and a palette right out of DC Comics, Rocco uses dialogue balloons and plenty of  POWS and ZAPS to show the superdudes in action, switching to gray and white pages when the heroes lose their powers at the barbershop, and returning to color when the clean-cut heroes discover that even minus their manes, their mojo is still working. For a dynamic duo, a mane event, pair this story with Bethany Barton's This Monster Needs a Haircut (see review here)

A 2012 Caldecott winner for his Blackout, Rocco is a versatile author-illustrator who goes way back to Aesop for his fractured fable, Wolf! Wolf! (see review here), and ventures into fantasy in Moonpowder, very different stories but all with exemplary artwork.

Head Mice: The Girl Who Wouldn't Brush Her Hair by Kate Bernheimer

THERE ONCE WAS A GIRL WHO WOULDN'T BRUSH HER HAIR. HER HAIR WAS WONDERFUL--BEAR-BROWN AND WAVY.

Following her nightly bath, the girl refuses to brush out her hair, despite her mother's pleas that it is turning into a veritable rats' nest.

"IT'S JUST MY WAY," THE GIRL SAYS.

And as her mother dreads, a mouse takes up residence there in a particularly rat-nesty tangle. And soon his relatives begin to move in, happily making their way through tunnels and burrows in her hair. But the mice are polite, fond of bedtime fairy tales, pleasant to the girl's fortunately hairless doll, Baby, and amuse her with their supply of knock-knock jokes.

At school the kids marvel at the menagerie in her hair, but when her mother refuses to pack lunches for her head mice, the girl gets very hungry sharing her lunch with the rodent horde. And then a committee of her resident mice petition for her to stop taking showers, insisting that they fear drowning. The girl complies, but soon she is dirty, smelly, and still very hungry. Finally her teacher decides that certain steps must be taken:

THE TEACHER SAID, "I AM SORRY, BUT YOU CAN NO LONGER BRING BABY. EACH CHILD MAY HAVE ONLY ONE FRIEND, AND IT APPEARS YOU HAVE 100 MICE IN YOUR HAIR."

Now this is serious. In a choice between Baby and her head-resident mice, it's an easy decision--the mice must be evicted, in Kate Bernheimer's hair-raising fantasy, The Girl Who Wouldn't Brush Her Hair (Schwartz & Wade, 2013). For all kids who have ever run screaming from the hairbrush, this runaway hair tale is sure to strike a familiar note. Artist Jake Parker's hirsute heroine is a doll-like beauty whose luxuriant locks provide for intricate illustrations of mice at leisure in their ample tangles, while his cute Disney-esque mice offset the yuck factor of the girl's unwashed mane. The illustrator even gets the last laugh as the girl emerges from the inevitable shampoo with clean, shining braids while the mice are seen busily setting up residence in another classmate's coiffure.

This is a fine and funny fable of hair hygiene which will pair well with Laurie Halse Anderson's The Hair of Zoe Fleefenbacher Goes to School, (see my review here) Lee Fox's Ella Kazoo Will Not Brush Her Hair, or even Bethany Barton's This Monster Needs a Haircut. (see review here).

Morphing the Monster: The Monsterator by Keith Graves

MASTER EDGAR DREADBURY
FOUND HALLOWEEN A BORE.

THE WHOLE BUSINESS OF COSTUMES
WAS A MISERABLE CHORE.

Master Edgar has the spooky mansion, the scary tree outside his window, the jack o' lantern on his candle stand, and the Eddie Munster haircut already. He hardly needs any Halloweenification. But duty calls, and after Edgar rejects his old vampire, zombie, and clown costumes, he drags himself downtown to shop for something suitable. Suddenly he spots a store he'd never seen before, The Emporium. It certainly has the right atmosphere.

IT WAS DANK AND DARK AS A CELLAR.

"SERVICE!!" HE CALLED.

When no one appears, Edgar looks around on his own. But there are no costumes to be seen.

But then he does see something that looks promising. It's a musty, dusty contraption with an enticing name:THE MONSTERATOR! The phlegmatic Edgar guesses instantly what this machine is supposed to do.

"OH, WHY NOT?"

Edgar puts his dime in the slot, steps inside, and ....

As electric sparks crackle through his body, his hair stands on end and Edgar quivers, shivers, and...

EDGAR WAS MONSTERATED

FROM HIS KNEES TO HIS NOSE

AND MONSTERATED SOME MORE; FROM HIS TEETH TO HIS TOES.

And it's GREAT! Edgar has horns. He's hairy and scary, with dragon scales and tail. He's gorgeously gruesome and he scares the heck out of everyone. It's the best Halloween ever.

But when Edgar is done chasing yowling black cats, squeamish squirrels, and terrified trick-or-treating tots, he returns for his de-Monsteration! But... The Emporium, Monsterator and all, has vanished.

Has Edgar learned his lesson? Has he seen the folly of trying to fool Mother Nature? Is he filled with regret? Is there some wise wizard troll or hairy fairy ready to reverse his monstrous transformation?

Uh, NO. And Edgar likes it that way, in Keith Graves' duly droll The Monsterator (Roaring Brook Press, 2014). As illustrator, the appropriately surnamed Graves offers all the trappings and tropes of the monster mansion, done up in suitably somber and murky tones, and as author his quaint and curious quatrains summon up the spirit of that other Edgar (Poe), while providing some delightfully funny rhymes.

But... THERE'S MORE! At the back of the book Graves provides readers with their own chance to monsterate Edgar with a stack of quarter-page flip pages so that kids can re-form Edgar from head to toe with a total of 625 new monsterated versions of our hero. This book is a total hoot--one kids will love to share as they combine and re-combine the possibilities. The book will wear out before the kids do, making Graves' The Monsterator a sure-fire hit for scary season reading.