There's a Wardrobe in My Monster!

Bored with her goldfish, cat and dog, Martha sets out to buy a monster at the local pet store. She wears a chagrined yet determined expression, piggy bank in hand, and announces, ""One large monster, please."" Johnson, exhibiting the comic sense of perspective he used to great effect in his debut, What! Cried Granny, conjures a vast yet spare store populated with ominous tentacled, long-tailed and beady-eyed creatures peering out from behind bars. Martha selects ""that green fellow with the awful grin"" who eats only wood. The monster soon graduates from modest meals of ""twigs on toast"" to the dog's house and finally Martha's wooden wardrobe. After he literally eats the girl out of house and home, Martha returns him to the pet store owner, whose exchanges-only policy ensures that Martha is bound for another challenge. Geoghegan (Dogs Don't Wear Glasses) strikes the right note with smart-alecky Martha, keeping her just this side of likable and making her growing frustration palpable. Johnson, too, paints her as a study in contradictions. Martha sports black-and-white bull's-eye dresses straight out of an Austin Powers movie, paired with pink bunny slippers and a purple and olive-green teddy bear. The monster looks perfectly harmless, but for his enormous size. Only the overuse of white space in the design detracts from the scenes. A quirky take on the tried-and-true pet story. Ages 3-8. (Sept.)