There's a Monster in my House; There's a Dragon at my School
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Cover Story
This issue's cover is a photograph of Anne Frank whose diary is discussed by Michael Rosen fifty years after its first publication. Following the arrest of the Frank family and their companions, the secret annex in Amsterdam where they had been in hiding was locked up and everybody forbidden to enter it, since Jewish possessions became Nazi property and were carted away. Before this happened, the young woman, Miep Gies, who had provided those in hiding with food and who had a second key to the annex, risked herself once more by entering it. Miep retrieved Anne's diary from the devastation together with the Frank family photograph album.
Thanks to Penguin Children's Books for help in reproducing this cover.
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There's a Monster in my House
Illustrated by Stephen Cartwright
There's a Dragon at my School
Illustrated by Stephen Cartwright
Two engaging lift-the-flap picture books in which Cartwright's stocky children have a pleasant air of being relatives of Charlie Brown - it is the around heads, I think. In the first, Milly is convinced she sees a monster in all sorts of places in the house. Open the door or lift the flap, however, and you can see it is only one of a variety of animals in various tricky disguises. (Although, is that a monster in the last picture, after all?)
In the second title, which I think works even better, the dragon causes all sorts of mayhem in school and the young reader has the chance to guess what he has done before opening the cupboard or flap to find out. Both books have a simple refrain to join in with or to help early readers; large, clear typeface aids this sharing.
