by Moe Zilla

Created on: August 15, 2010

"On the hill is a castle -
let's go and see.
They say a monster lives inside,
But no, that couldn't be."

The scary castle gets visited by three children, a horse, and a dog walk. It's surrounded by a moat "where slimy green things grow." They enter by crossing a creaking, groaning drawbridge. Inside is a courtyard with an overgrown well...

Beyond it is a passage with a worn-down stone floor. Its stone steps curve down to a locked door underground. And then the book reveals its big surprise. "...who is sitting very still in the shadows there?"

"IT'S THE MONSTER! RUN!"

He'd lurked at the back of "the dark, dank dungeon." As the children run, we see only his hairy, dark legs with their long, untrimmed toe nails. As the children rush up the stairs, that locked door opens in the background, as a dark, hairy leg steps through. As they try to escape, the drawbridge is rising. The horse actually swims through the moat, with the littlest boy riding on its back!

The book definitely delivers on its premise of a creepy visit to the inside of a castle. (The characters are never given names, which makes the story more effective.) It's as though the reader joined them on their trek into the unknown. And unlike the usual harmless children's stories, this one seems to deliver a real monster. He's even seen on the very last page - dark and hairy - calling out to the children, "Thanks for letting me out!"

To get the mood right, illustrator John Bendall-Brunello explored a real castle, according to the book's jacket. ("It didn't have a dungeon, but there was a dark and dingy area full of bats that was quite scary.") His simple watercolor and pencil illustrations bring a softer flimsiness to what could otherwise be a too-scary story for younger readers. The monster is about the size of a man, and at first I just wondered if he was a forgotten prisoner, with unclipped toe nails and legs that over the years had grown hairy.

Parents will know best whether they want to give their children a story with one pencil-and-watercolor illustration of a monster in a castle. But however flawed their example, the children in the still dared to explore the unknown. June Crebbin wrote the book because she "wanted to capture the feeling of going into a place, even though you might be scared," according to the book's jacket, "of daring to go further because you want to know what's there." Yes, there's a scary monster in the castle, and yes, the children immediately run in the other direction.

But before they did that, they'd first honored their curiosity.

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