The Monster at the End of This Book

I bought a few books for the kids last week, and it turns out our five-year-old is at exactly the right age for The Monster at the End of This Book: Each time we read it, she wants me to go back to the first page and read it again.

For those who’ve never had the pleasure, The Monster at the End of This Book has a delightfully meta plot: Sesame Street’s Grover learns the title of the book he is in, and so implores the reader to stop turning the book’s pages in order to avoid the monster. My five-year-old was howling with laughter as she turned the pages and Daddy voiced Grover’s reactions.

My one bit of melancholy with this book is that my kids have had almost no exposure to Sesame Street – their media diet has been more Disney than PBS – and so they can’t fully appreciate how well (or poorly) Daddy is doing Grover’s voice. But maybe this book will end up being their intro to Sesame Street, so who knows?