{"id":9841,"date":"2023-09-13T10:54:03","date_gmt":"2023-09-13T14:54:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/?p=9841"},"modified":"2023-09-13T10:54:03","modified_gmt":"2023-09-13T14:54:03","slug":"book-review-monster-club-by-darren-arnofsky-and-ari-handel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/book-review-monster-club-by-darren-arnofsky-and-ari-handel\/","title":{"rendered":"Book Review: Monster Club by Darren Arnofsky and Ari Handel"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Monster\u00a0 Club<\/span><\/i> by Darren Aronofsky and Ari Handel<\/span><\/p>\n

HarperCollins, 2022<\/span><\/p>\n

ISBN: 9780063136632<\/span><\/p>\n

Available: Hardcover, paperback, Kindle edition<\/span><\/p>\n

Buy:\u00a0\u00a0Bookshop.org<\/a>\u00a0 |\u00a0\u00a0Amazon.com<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

If you\u2019ve seen <\/span>The Wrestler, Black Swan, <\/span><\/i>or <\/span>The Whale<\/span><\/i>, you know Darren Aronofsky is a serious director who directs serious films.\u00a0 Who knew that he and Ari Handel could write such a seriously fun kid\u2019s book?\u00a0 A loving tribute to the nerdy, role-playing gamers who still hide amongst the \u2018cool\u2019 students in junior high schools across the country, it\u2019s impossible to dislike <\/span>Monster Club.<\/span><\/i>\u00a0 It has it all: cool, comic-book styled monsters, light, frothy action that\u2019s its easy to enjoy and laugh along with, and of course, the nerdy kid gets the girl!<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Set against the backdrop of the famed Coney Island boardwalk, Eric “Doodles” King and his junior high pals, who go by the nicknames of Yoo-hoo, Smash, Hollywood, and Beanie, spend their time outside of school playing Monster Club, an RPG game they designed themselves, a cross between Dungeons and Dragons and pro wrestling. Their characters consist of monster drawings created by the players, each with hit points and attack skills, using some dice and a spinner from the old boardgame LIFE to determine their actions as the characters battle it out for superiority.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Fortune strikes in the form of a Sharpie with magic ink, which allows Eric to draw characters that come to life off the page.\u00a0 Can he use this gift to help save his dad\u2019s carnival, which is threatened by land developers?\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The story sells itself with the characters and breezy, happy nature of the writing.\u00a0<\/span>It\u2019s easy to root and relate to the Monster Clubbers since we all knew kids like them when we were kids, charming in their goofiness. Brainy Beanie is a member of a club that designs drones and Smash tends to crash her skateboard, often into lockers.\u00a0 Of course, they get picked on by the big kids, and can\u2019t play sports worth a damn.\u00a0 The story picks up the pace and shifts into the crazy fun section when the Sharpie falls into the wrong hands, allowing for creatures such as Noodle Monsters and Crumple Noodle.\u00a0 The last quarter of the book is insane fun,\u00a0 reminiscent of the movie Gremlins<\/i>.\u00a0 You knew that the gremlins were bad and were wrecking the town, yet you had to laugh at how they did it, thanks to the presentation.\u00a0 It\u2019s the same with the Noodle Monsters as they go wild on Coney Island.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

However, the Monster Club creations of Brickman, BellyBeast, Robokillz and their ilk stand ready to do battle and save Coney Island.\u00a0 The fights themselves are some of the best parts.\u00a0 They aren\u2019t bloody, they are fun, Gremlins<\/i>-style.\u00a0 BellyBeast picks his nose and sticks it in Brickman\u2019s ear, while Brickman himself dishes out some pretty mean ball-shots with his cannonball on a chain to neighborhood bullies.\u00a0 Readers will be enthusiastically cheering on the good guys in their quest to smash those evil Noodle Monsters and save the carnival.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Bottom line here: this is lighthearted fun with a lot of bounce to it, and it\u2019s one all readers of this site would enjoy.\u00a0 It\u2019s oriented towards the middle grade\/early teen crowd, but it\u2019s plenty of fun for adults too, especially those who grew up like the main characters, they will see themselves in the story.\u00a0 Recommended.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Reviewed by Murray Samuelson<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Monster\u00a0 Club by Darren Aronofsky and Ari Handel HarperCollins, 2022 ISBN: 9780063136632 Available: Hardcover, paperback, Kindle edition Buy:\u00a0\u00a0Bookshop.org\u00a0 |\u00a0\u00a0Amazon.com   If you\u2019ve seen The Wrestler, Black Swan, or The Whale, you know Darren Aronofsky is a serious director who directs serious films.\u00a0 Who knew that he and Ari Handel could write such a seriously fun<\/p>\n

Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[5459,2568,3644,3062,5462,2190,5458,3977,5034,4851,2407,1573,5457,1179,5460,5461,1217],"class_list":["post-9841","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-ari-handel","tag-bullying","tag-carnivals","tag-coming-of-age-stories","tag-coney-island","tag-contemporary-fantasy","tag-darren-arnofsky","tag-friendship","tag-gentrification","tag-horror-book-review","tag-middle-grade-fiction","tag-middle-school","tag-monster-club","tag-monsters","tag-roleplaying-games","tag-rpgs","tag-scary-books-for-kids"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9841","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9841"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9841\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9864,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9841\/revisions\/9864"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9841"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9841"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9841"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}