by Marita van der Vyver, illustrated by Dale Blankenaar (Tafelberg)
Daniel is sleeping over at his grandparents’ house, a spooky, grey, tall, narrow building surrounded by the skeletons of winter trees.
Sounds like the introduction to a ghost story, but it’s a light-hearted tale about a child’s fear of the dark (and of sleeping in a strange bed), aimed at children aged 5 and older.
The story and illustrations are scary enough to hold a child’s attention, but the fear factor is tempered with humour, so it won’t keep your little one awake or anxiously eyeing the cupboard for signs of monsters.
And Grandma and Grandpa have a comforting, matter-of-fact response to Daniel’s cries of “There’s a monster under my bed!”
The monsters in this case are fantastical hybrid creatures borne of a clever little boy’s imagination: rhinocephants, a crocopotamus and a blue gnuraffe, for example.
My son was in giggles over the names of the monsters, even though the pictures are suitably terrifying.
This has to be one of my favourites.
It even had an exhausted, somewhat jaded reader of bedtime stories laughing.
Definitely not your run-of-the-mill children’s book; I’m keeping this one until he can read it to me.