Customer Reviews

Even Monsters Need Haircuts

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
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"Even Monsters Need Haircuts" is a fun picture book targeted to second graders and younger. The story is about a boy whose father is a town barber. Imitating his father, the boy has his own barber shop...of a different sort. Once a month, accompanied by his customer Vlad (as in Vlad Dracula), the the barbershop serves only monsters.

His customers include classic monsters like Frankenstein (he gets a flat top), Wolfman (not an easy cut), and others like a skeleton (the boy has trouble figuring out what to do with this one). My 6-year-old's favorites were Cyclops and Medusa.

At the end of the night, the boy and his friends put everything away, including the rotting tonic, horn polish, and especially the shamp-ewww.

The art is colorful, bright and cheerful. The monsters are cartoonish and friendly, so there's no concern of any overt fright.

The book would be a perfect Halloween time purchase.

I received this book from the Goodreads First Reads program.

This is a very simple story with the basic plot being a child sneaks out to his father's barber shop on the full moon every month, where every monster knows, he will cut their hair for them. Only this time after giving most of the monsters in the shop at trim a new customer arrives, a human man. What will the boy do, he's never cut the hair of a normal human before?

The book works well due to just how simple it is. The illustrations mostly tell the story with the text referring to the pictures. Most monsters aren't mentioned by name either so it's a good one to point to and educate your child on the folklore of most of the world's most famous monsters. Some of the jokes in the illustrations might need to be explained such as the boy turning away while wearing a blindfold from Medusa's hair of snakes so he won't turn to stone. The illustrations like the text are simple and really well drawn. Any child who loves monsters will want to read this!

If you liked this you might also want to check out Adam Rex's Frankenstein Makes a Sandwich which is equally fun.

This book, third in a series, is delightful. Both the 4 year old and 8 year old love the books. The humor in text combined with fantastic illustrations make a winning combination!!!

What first attracts you to a picture book? In the case of my next read, a much-worn library book by Matthew McElligott, it was the title: Even Monsters Need Haircuts. With a title like that, who could resist? If I were rating the book on the strength of its story alone, I would place it on the top of my favorites list. From the very first page, my curiosity was piqued:

My dad is a barber. I like to watch him work. I'm a barber too.

I wonder: Why is this boy a barber? The next page further reels me in, by telling me that there will be a full moon and that the boy needs to go to bed early. Is this boy a werewolf? What is going on here? Of course I'm not going to tell you, but needless to say I like how every page reveals just a little bit more until the final twist at the end. Even Monsters Need Haircuts is as good as its title led me to believe.

The illustrations are the reason I can't put this book on the top of my favorites list. Although some reviewers have called them bright and cheerful, I found them muted and kind of average. I'm not saying they are done badly, but don't you kind of want your monsters to be scary? After all, that's why they're monsters. Then again, this isn't a story about conquering big bad monsters. For that reason, I'd settle for ridiculously weird, whereas these monsters seem just like you and me. Maybe that was the point, but the artwork seems flat for such an otherwise delightful tale.

This is such a fun book. My 4 & 5 year old love it and it's definitely in the top 10 books asked to be read most often in our large collection of books. I read it to my son's kindergarten class at Halloween time and they all thought it was very funny and were very interested in the story. The detailed pictures of the different monsters are fun too look at. Perfect book!

A great monster book that's not scary or too intense for very young readers. It tells a simple story that's a great tie-in at Halloween time but just as good anytime.

My son is a barber, my grandson is a huge monster fan - this was the PERFECT book for him!

My daughters have really enjoyed this funny and cute book. I picked this for Halloween but plan to keep it in the rotation year-round.