Todd Parr doesn’t need my reviews. No one who is a New York Times bestseller does, but this 2023 title is the first of Parr’s works I’ve read, so…good stuff.
It is easy to see why Parr–and The Monster Mac and Cheese Party–are so popular. This art is vivid. It has the intense color of good graffiti and the simple lines of good cartoons. The result is art that kids will embrace voluntarily. It is easy to imagine kids flipping the book open to, say, the yellowish page with the one-eyed monster on it and dragging an adult over to read this.
The story is simple: the monsters are having a monsters-only mac and cheese party, with no humans allowed! The (clearly harmless) monsters arrive one at a time, and each brings their personal take on mac and cheese. Some make sense, like the spider mac and cheese with flies. Some are more of a stretch, like mummy mac with eyeballs.
Of course, after the monsters are there, those pesky humans show up…but everything works out in the end.
I enjoyed the story, but I loved the art, and want to figure out how Parr works.
