Ten-year-old Kevin Aurelius and his two siblings travel with their vampire parents and a slew of creatures including an ogre, werewolves, and trolls\u2014all members of a traveling circus known as the Carnival Monstromo. When a wrong turn strands them in the quiet human town of Lower Drudging, the carnival delays travel to the Festival of Fear and instead advertises a performance for the townsfolk. Kevin has never met a human, but he\u2019s heard his Uncle Dax\u2019s stories and is quite nervous, despite his mother\u2019s reassurance. He soon encounters Lower Drudging resident Susie Cabbage, who each day toils away at a near-endless list of chores for her cruel aunts, Vileous and Dingy Cabbage, who took her in years ago. Susie isn\u2019t missing much, though, since village leaders have forbidden fun to appease the \u201cYou-Know-What\u201d living in nearby Cold Mountain. Kevin and Susie team up to save both the Carnival Monstromo and Lower Drudging, along the way finding friendship and personal growth as monsters and humans alike learn not to make snap judgments about one another. Sorrentino\u2019s energetic black-and-white illustrations depict human and monster life (both varied in skin tone); Brown\u2019s occasional potty humor (farts, a dragon\u2019s toilet), tween-friendly ick (nose hair, toe jam), and creative names will tickle funny bones. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Ten-year-old Kevin Aurelius and his two siblings travel with their vampire parents and a slew of creatures including an ogre, werewolves, and trolls\u2014all members of a traveling circus known as the Carnival Monstromo. When a wrong turn strands them in the quiet human town of Lower Drudging, the carnival delays travel to the Festival of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":6773,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6772","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interesting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6772"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6772"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6772\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6773"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6772"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6772"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6772"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}