Marisol McDonald and the Monster / Marisol McDonald y el monstruo

Review
By The Horn Book Magazine

The ever-imaginative Marisol McDonald (Marisol McDonald Doesn’t Match / Marisol McDonald no combina) returns to show readers the wonders of words beginning with the letter M, from milk with miel (honey) to Millie the Mighty, a classroom mouse. One M word, however, scares Marisol more than others: “Monster!/ ¡Monstruo!” A “BUMP” in the night fills Marisol’s mind with worrisome questions. But she comes up with a characteristically imaginative answer, and then learns the real, not-so-scary cause of the sound. In Palacios’s mixed-media art, everything from the “mismatched and marvelous” clothes that Marisol wears to the lumpy family dog, Kitty, sparkles with color and personality, matching Marisol’s exuberant character. Nighttime scenes use a deeper array of hues: muted purples, solid blues, soft pinks, and greens. The plot zips along, and Dominguez, who has now teamed up with Brown several times (including Tito Puente: Mambo King / Rey del mambo, rev. 3/13), preserves the text’s tone nicely in her translation (and occasionally moves fluidly past a word when its Spanish equivalent starts with a different letter). Appended with a glossary/glosario.