Monster Club (Monster Club #1)

A 12-year-old’s monster doodles come to life and terrorize his Brooklyn neighborhood in a quirky novel by collaborators Aronofsky and Handel (Noah). With his parents bickering more than ever over the fate of his father’s Coney Island amusement park, King’s Wonderland, Eric “Doodles” King is counting on Monster Club, a neighborhood group dedicated to developing the “coolest, smartest monster battle game of all time,” to distract him. But as the club crumbles following a blowout with one of its members, who claims the group has outgrown the game, Doodles scrambles for a way to keep them together. As Doodles contends with tense relationships and literal monsters, flashbacks detailing a surrealist 1940s Coney Island and Doodles’s great-great-grand-father fleeing a pogrom in Kyiv feature throughout. Disjointed pacing, a tone that unevenly vacillates between somber and silly, and thinly rendered characters impede what is an otherwise boisterous read. Classic tropes such as monsters coming to life and friends on the outs banding together to defeat a larger evil permeate this action-packed series opener, a savory match for fans of Doodleville. Final art not seen by PW. Ages 8–12. (Sept.)