How to Care for Your Monster

Here’s anoth­er “inspi­ra­tional stuff” post for you. It isn’t about a com­ic this time, but a book. One that I’m not even sure is in print any­more. But if not, it should be.

I came across this book called How to Care for Your Mon­ster when I was about 9 or 10 years old. As a kid, there are often cool things which cross your path and cap­ture your atten­tion for a while. Every so often though, you get your hands on some­thing and real­ize that not only do you think it’s cool now, you know for a fact that you will still think it’s cool even when you’re an adult. And How to Care for Your Mon­ster was one of those things for me.

The book was writ­ten and drawn by Nel­son Brid­well (the same guy respon­si­ble for Clif­ford the Big Red Dog, I believe). The con­cept was pret­ty clever; talk­ing about var­i­ous types of clas­sic mon­sters as if they were pets, serv­ing as a guide to the do’s and don’ts of car­ing for them. The humor is even mild­ly bent at points, in a way that I’m not sure a mod­ern kids’ book could get away with. I thought this book was great then, and I still think so now!

The draw­ing above is my attempt (I put the empha­sis on the word “attempt”) at try­ing to cap­ture the style and feel of the illus­tra­tions in the book. “Fan art,” kin­da. I prob­a­bly should’ve just drawn this in my own style, but my ani­ma­tion train­ing com­pelled me to attempt to put it on-mod­el. Still, it was an inter­est­ing experiment.

Any­way, it’s a real­ly fun book. If you ever come across a used copy at a rea­son­able price, give it a look! As a pub­lic ser­vice, I’m post­ing a scan at right of the cov­er of my very own much-loved copy that I’ve hung onto for all these years, so you’ll know what you’re look­ing for. Don’t say I nev­er did any­thing for you!

How to Care for Your Mon­ster is ©1970 Nor­man Bridwell.

 

5 thoughts on “How to Care for Your Monster

    1. Mark Post author

      Ben,
      Hey, thanks for stop­ping by! I’m glad I’m not the only one who remem­bers this book. Too bad it’s not still in print.

      Reply
  1. Lyle Dodd

    Hey! I read that book when I was a kid too! I remem­ber it vivid­ly. Wow, what mem­o­ries that brings back.

    Reply
  2. Amy

    I’m try­ing to find this book online for a decent price to buy for my broth­er for his birth­day. He had this book as a kid and is turn­ing 50 this June. 🙂

    Reply
    1. Mark Post author

      Hmm. Well, it looks like Ama­zon has some sec­ond-hand. There’s the orig­i­nal, and what looks to be a lat­er edi­tion from 1988 (though I don’t know if the cov­er’s the same). Oth­er than that, you could try your luck on eBay maybe? Good luck!

      Reply

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