We fell in love with Rufus as soon as we read his story. Rufus wants to be a scary monster but he lives alone in the desert and there are only clouds and rocks to rant and rage at. What he really needs to find is a Peopley Person to scare!
The Story: There’s nobody to scare in the desert so Rufus researches how to scare people. He tries to find some but although he sees a bus full of vampires he can’t find any people anywhere. After a long search he finally discovers a super spooky party and is befriended by a small ghost who gives him a huge surprise…
Rufus is a monster that we immediately sympathised with and he looks so cute that we weren’t at all scared of him! He’s lonely but determined and despite doing his best to solve his problem it seems that he will never find a Peopley Person to scare. Rufus doesn’t have the same experience of people as we do and we love the way that the picture clues lead us to a twist at the end of the story. When Rufus is finally given the chance to scare a person he doesn’t behave in the way that we expected and his actions lead to him making a new friend.
Rufus has never met a Peopley Person and we love the book that he uses to learn about their behaviour before going out into the world to find one. His search takes him to a variety of places including the beach and the forest, he even goes up in a hot air balloon. Simon Bartram’s illustrations are full of amusing details and we love the first picture of Rufus which is labelled with descriptions about him and includes how he smells and what he uses his claws for. My favourite illustration shows Rufus searching ‘above AND below the waves’ and my daughter loves the smiley snowman.
The Super Spooky Party is full of monsters, mummies, vampires and witches which makes this a great picture book to read at Halloween but ultimately this is the tale of a monster who finds happiness and friendship in a very unexpected way 🙂
Author / Illustrator: Simon Bartram
Thank you to Templar Publishing for sending us a copy of Rufus. We would love to see more stories about this lovable monster.
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