Fear In There Are Monsters Everywhere By Mercer Mayer

As creatures on Earth we are all given different emotions and feelings. To be happy in good times, sad in others, or angry at times of struggle. Nonetheless we were also given the feelings of fear which can be quiet terrifying for some individuals depending on what they are afraid of. When it comes to children there is a common fear of monsters and being left alone. The fear of monsters is shown in Mercer Mayer’s children’s book, There Are Monsters Everywhere. The book is narrated by an unknown boy that believes that when his parents are not around, the monsters come out from hiding in his house. Mayer does a good job demonstrating how scared the boy is through not only the text, but the illustrations as well. The boy ends up taking

The humorous and detailed illustrations allow us to view the boy’s progress of scaring off the monsters so they do not bother him anymore. As humans it is our nature to be afraid of different things, although it is also the responsibility of each individual to learn some way to overcome one’s own fear because that is what makes us stronger people.

(Text-before) Throughout the book the text is mostly located above or below the pictures, only does the text appear in the middle of the images a limited amount of times. The boy is the only one talking in the text, which makes the story easy for young readers to feel like they are the main character and relate to his experiences, since most children have a common fear of monsters. The boy believes that the monsters would “hide when my mom was around” (Mayer 4) this could be because she overcame her fear that she had of monsters when she was a

The illustrations on most pages take up the full page, making it feel like you are living in this house. The monsters and the boy are about the same size. In the illustrations the readers are able to clearly see what the monsters look like, even though they hidden from the view of the boy in the story. Each monster has very detailed designs and is different from one another. The monsters that appear by the garbage cans, in the bathroom, and the bedroom are consistent with each other which helps us to know which monsters live where. Looking at the faces of the monsters when the boy is afraid of them, they are smiling and happy for the most part until they are no longer scary to the boy and their facial expressions change as well. Once the boy overcomes his fear of the monsters we can tell that the monsters are ready to leave because they are the ones afraid of the boy who can do karate. There is a role change that is clearly viewed in the images. The monsters are now hiding on the top bunk, or in the basement, and running away from the garbage