A lovely reader letter arrived the other day that really made me chuckle: Zachary wrote that he and his brother Solly had named one of their kittens Barry after the monster cat from Monster & Chips, much to the amusement of everyone!
Solly also drew a picture of all the Monster & Chips characters (plus Barry Mk.2).
Brilliant! Thank you so much, chaps!
Every now and again I get sent a monster design using the activity sheets I created for Monster & Chips – you can find them here.
This brilliant monster is Buddy, created by Jesse Becerra. Buddy’s super-cool, with his tentacles and multiple eyeballs, and also has great taste in pizza. Thanks, Jesse!
I get lots of emails from readers in the Netherlands who have to do book reports for school – it sounds like it’s quite a common thing to do. Students have to find out about the book’s authors as well as telling their classmates about the story. I’m quite happy to answer questions as it’s always nice to know that people like your book enough to tell others about it.
I don’t often get to hear how the book reports go, so was very pleased to hear back from Philippe (aged 8) who was awarded a 9 for his report! I’m not surprised, as he included a monstrous menu of his own making:
Translation:
Blood Soup with Living Human Eyes
Hamburger with Dead Cricket
Pizza of Darkness (the title of the second Monstersnackbar book)
That is the scariest pizza I’ve seen in quite a while. I think I’d stick to the hamburger.
Philippe also included a menu made by one of his classmates.
Translation:
Dung Beetles with chips
Frog Legs with chips
Lion’s Eyeballs with (large) chips
Zombie Cupcakes with Icing and chips
Beetles with chips
Very tasty! I love the little illustrations that go with the food, just like the menus in the Monster & Chips (De Monstersnackbar in Dutch) books.
Thanks so much for sending these, Philippe!
I’ve just come back from a holiday to find that The Guardian have posted some of the entries to the Monster & Chips competition that ran a while ago.
And here’s the winner: congratulations to Luke Westall! I chose his character, Itsi, as I thought Luke had shown the best imagination in both his drawing and in the things he had written about his character. There was a lot about Itsi’s personality and how he would fit into the world of monsters: I could just see him in a Monster & Chips story. Also, sabre-tooth cats are very cool.
Part of Luke’s prize was a drawing of Itsi by me, so here’s my version:
Huge thanks to The Guardian for hosting the competition! You can see a whole load of other entrants here.
Here’s another bit of Monster & Chips artwork sent to me recently – a great picture of Joe, chips and all, drawn by Tomos Rees. Tomos’ mum and dad are old friends of mine – apparently he likes to draw every night before bedtime. I wish I could be that organised!
