The book is headed "Your Pal Mo Willems Presents" instead of having a normal author's name, why? There are no movie allusions in it.
There are also many gimmicky things of the "what's the point of that?" I had a feeling that the author enjoyed doing the monsters and screeching kid a lot, and then, after Leonardo makes his big decision to change, lost inspiration.
The story, which starts promisingly, peters out quite feebly not because the resolution is positive, but because it's uninspired and mushy. Yes, the artwork is reasonably stylish and humorous, and the story is a take on 'how to deal with a terrifying bundle of emotions that resides in every child' theme but there isn't really anything particularly great about it, while there are several things that annoyed me. Leonardo is a tribute to (or a derivative of) the Sendak's classic and I can't say I was particularly taken with the execution. Alas, he doesn't succeed in scaring him and instead they become friends. After an impressive research session, Leonardo finds such a kid. Leonardo himself is a rather poor specimen: nobody, but nobody is afraid of him and he's very determined to actually scare the tuna salad out of somebody: ideally, the most scaredy-cat kid he can find. Leonardo starts rather promisingly: with a play on words (as Leonardo of the title is terrible at monstering, rather than terrifying) and a stylish catalogue of strange and awesome monsters begotten somewhere in the Gruffalo-meets-Sendak land, and a good splash of humour. Summary: This might be worth a look in the library for the classy graphics and the monsters at the beginning are good, but overall it's an example of form over content, and the BookBag was annoyed rather than impressed.
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