Nibbles: The Monster Hunt

Nibbles is a tiny, yellow book-eating monster that wreaks havoc wherever he goes. In this installment in the “Nibbles” series, the mischievous monster nibbles his way through a young boy’s favourite book of fascinating facts. There are facts about the sun and moon, dogs and cats, images, words, colours and numbers. The fact book starts off with paragraphs in which the vocabulary is above that of the rest of the book, with one example being: “It’s believed that friendly, domesticated dogs are descended from a ferocious species of prehistoric wolf.” In the section about images, which, interestingly says not much of anything, a dragon leaps off the canvas in an art gallery photo to chase after Nibbles through some books-within-a-book, the first of which, on colour, introduces readers to primary colours and mentions mixing colours but never actually shows the results. A counting book is next, but, with the dragon hot on Nibbles’s tail, Nibbles quickly counts down from five to one and blasts off into space and, likely, to another adventure.

Young children will enjoy the interactive aspect of this book – flaps and books within a book. Unlike the other books in the series, however, this book only has one flap to lift, and there is no need to have the book-within-a-book aspect because Nibbles has gnawed into a single volume fact book. Readers will also follow the antics of Nibbles, who, though a monster, is actually quite cute and not scary at all. But the story has no real plot, merely a chase through a book, complete with die-cut “bite” holes where Nibbles chomps through the pages, and, with the exception of his naughtiness, Nibbles displays no character traits, thus making him not particularly relatable nor even likeable. Since the story is so focused on the chase, readers will not even notice that there is little content. Some of the subtleties, such as the anagram of Emma Yarlett’s name as author of the fact book, will be lost on such a young audience.

Part narrative and part conversation by means of speech bubbles, the text focuses primarily on Nibbles’s attempt to escape from the dragon by means of chomping through book pages. Like the other books in the series, this title is all about the chase, but it misses a marvelous opportunity to pause and inform kids about a variety of topics. The few facts presented can hardly be called a learning experience.

Fun, cartoonlike illustrations are rendered in golds, teals and reds and provide extra little details to enhance the reader’s enjoyment of the book. One concern is that the flaps and smaller books will not withstand repeated use with multiple borrowers in a public library setting.
Though the concept of this story had potential, both in terms of plot and a way to inspire in children a love of reading, the story really goes nowhere. Once again, Nibbles: The Monster Hunt is more of the same, just another chase, but through a different book.