by Moe Zilla

Created on: March 21, 2009

It's got the most original artwork I've ever seen in a children's book. The title page looks like a kidnapper's ransom note, with each letter in a different font over splotches of red, yellow, and a creepy purple-black. It's the story of "Monster Mama," and every page roars with imagination. But while Liz Rosenberg dedicated the book to her mother, "the original Monster Mama," artist Stephen Gammell seems to be communing with something far more psychedelic.

It's the story of little Patrick Edward, but Gammell draws his house in a pumpkin orange, with an unusually steep roof that comes to a point, like a witch's hat. His mother lives in a cave in the back, and to create grass over its opening, Gammell uses wild dribbles of an eerie fluorescent-green paint. When the mother is first seen, messy dribbles of color run down her dress, matching the wildness of her tangle of hair. "Sometimes she painted," Rosenberg explains, "sometimes she gardened, and sometimes she tossed Patrick Edward lightly up and down in the air, for fun."

The pictures never snap back to the ordinariness of a simple children's illustration. Blue splatters leap out of the frame as Rosenberg
writes that "Her bad moods terrified the neighborhood." Orange
rises from Edward's when he has a fever - impossibly spewing orange into the background - while his mother feeds him spoonfuls of a strange green liquid. And instead of seeing the mother's face, she's usually hidden behind a tangle of colors and wild hair. And she lurks in the dark center of a yellow cave whenever Edward's friends come to visit.

The mother disappears from the story for 10 pages when Edward visits the market to buy strawberries. He stands proud and defiant when he's bullied by three boys, but soon they've chased him up a hillside and tied him to a tree. "'Lizards,' Patrick Edward said scornfully. 'Death to all tyrants!'" And when they insult his mother, he roars, and then chases the boys down the hillside.

And then the monster mama re-appears...

The frightened boys quickly pick up the fallen strawberries, and even bake them into a lovely strawberry tea cake with French whipped cream. And it's then that Rosenberg delivers her story's message - which is all the more effective because the book wasn't the least bit sweet.

"No matter where you go, or what you do, I will be there. Because I am your mother, even if I am a monster - and I love you."

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