The Monster at the End of this Book

The Monster at the End of this Book by Jon Stone and Michael Smollin

My first substantive post has to feature what I consider to be in the Top 10 of all children's books of all time. It's sentimental for me because I remember reading it as a child with my father (who read to me nearly every night). Our daughter is a little too young to really get the story yet, but who doesn't love hearing smug Grover describe his plan to stop the reader from turning pages, then when he is defeated, his exasperation -- "YOU TURNED ANOTHER PAGE!!!"

Another children's book blogger made a fantastic post that really describes everything you need to know about this book --> here.

I love meta children's books generally, and I also love that there is a pop-up version of this book called Please Do Not Open This Book. Just realized that I purchased the pop-up version of this book for our child a full year and a half before she was born, which was a good thing because now it is out of print.

Family Info: There are no parents in this book at all, just Grover, thus making it a great selection for all families, regardless of structure.

Cost: Since this is a Little Golden Book, you can buy it for $3.99.

Intro - About

Welcome to this blog, and thank you for visiting. The purpose of this blog is to help other parents -- particularly same-sex parents and single parents -- discover new books for their children. I have always loved to read, and as a new parent, I sought out resources on the internet to find children's books to introduce to my daughter, who is 17 months old and also loves to read (yay!!). While there are several high quality children's book blogs that I enjoy reading, I saw a void in terms of a resource for parents that want to know about the family structure depicted in a book before they buy it.

In addition, I have found that my enjoyment of our nightly reading time with my daughter is pretty dependent on how much I like the books we are reading -- it is a terrible feeling to love reading, but dread a reading session when you've literally read every book thirty times. Thus, I hope this blog can be a resource to all families interested in learning about potential new books to add to the stack, not just same-sex parents.

The goals of this blog:

1) provide a background on the family structure depicted in popular (and sometimes obscure) children's books

2) generally recommend books we love

3) provide reviews of books targeted to families with same-sex parents or children conceived through artificial reproduction.