Short review with some pictures here:
http://everydayislikewednesday.blogsp...

From the creator of n  Persepolisn - the fabulous graphic memoir of growing up in revolutionary Iran - comes this lovely picture book about a young girl whose attempt to frighten away nighttime monsters leads to some unexpected consequences. When Marie cuts the moon out of the sky, in order to keep it in her room, the resultant darkness emboldens the rats, and causes immense chaos for the cats. Luckily, the Cat King knows how everyone's needs can be met...

I enjoyed Monsters Are Afraid of the Moon, with its brightly-colored illustrations, and its lovely pro-cat narrative, and think that it will provide some bedtime comfort to young children who are afraid of monsters. I can't say that it is a particularly brilliant book, but I am an admirer of Satrapi's, and thought it a worthy first foray into this genre.

I read this book because of this review: http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/.... , now one of my favorite reviews on Goodreads. (I suggest that you go and read that review. I think I liked this book as much as I did because of the review as much as because of the book itself.)

This is a cute book and it might be helpful for children who are afraid of monsters at night, but only if their household has at least one cat companion, or if their parents are amenable to keeping a light on at night. This book is by the author of the memoir Persepolis but I’d have never known it by reading/viewing the book; they’re so different.

Anche i mostri temono qualcosa...e qualcuno. Chi? Leggete questo libro e lo scoprirete

this story tells us how is it

I'm a fan of Marjane Satrapi, but this children's book just didn't do it for me. There are monsters that scare Marie at night, so she cuts out the moon and puts it in a birdcage in her room to keep the monsters away. It works, but the cats can't see at night without the moon, which means that the rats get out of control. The cat king finally negotiates with Marie to solve their mutual problems. It sounds like a cute story, but it's too simply told and the pictures are really big and colorful. Maybe this would be more fun to read with a young child.

I wonder if it's more charming in its original French...

The storyline goes that a little girl, Marie, likes doing the nice things of daytime but that it all chanes at nightfall; the monsters come out then!

So mate they don't like the light. So she brings a piece of the moon into her room.

And it Worked!!! But then, because the moon was gone, the cats…. and then the rats… and then the cats talk too…; and I'm not saying any more.
For the kids, the art is stylized, "normal" for the good parts; scary for the scary parts. Well designed.

Good for all ages but best for ages 3-12.

Some of the cutest cat drawings you have ever seen.

French-Iranian Marjane Satrapi has been hailed as one of the foremost comics artists of our time, and rightfully so I might add. This despite, or maybe because of the fact that she's only done a handful of graphic novels. A comparison to American Art Spiegelman is not out of place, both from the fact that Satrapi is so obviously inspired by Spiegelman's masterpiece Maus, and that he also has done few but very well received comics.

Besides the graphic novels that she's done, Satrapi has also made a few children's books, books that are less well know, though. I normally only review comics, but with children's books made by comics artists I make an exception, as I find it fascinating to see how they handle a whole other format of visual storytelling.

This book has a simple, straightforward story, with a flair of old fairy tales. A young girl is harassed by monsters during the nights and as a solution takes down the moon and hangs it in her room. This solves the problem, but has the effect that all cats loose their bearing in the night and the rats has a field day. The solution is that the King of cats offers the girl one of his knights, i.e. a cat to sleep by the girls bed to keep the moster away, and in return the girl sets the moon back in the sky.

The story is well told with neither too much or too little words per page and a good narrative flow. As an adult you need to suspend the knowledge that cats has just as good nigh vision as rats, but other than that it works fine.

The visuals are very distinct and it would probably surprise someone who has only read Satrapi's Persepolis to realise that she ha also drawn this. The thick black lines are there, but they are more polished than in the comics by Satrapi, and most importantly, these images have been coloured. The latter was done in a computer, with shadings, but tastefully so. It's a bit like when you start watching Satrapi's film version of Persepolis, which is great by the way, and at first feel a bit startled that things that you have read several times in black and white suddenly have color...

Anyway, if I would complain on anything it's that the text has been set in an ugly, harsh bold sans serif, which doesn't resonate with the drawings at all. I haven't seen the French original, so I don't know if this is the Swedish publisher being insensitive, or if they only followed suit.

Al-in-all, I liked the book, though not excessively so. I'll now subject it to the ultimate test and read ut to my baby girl, who's in the right age group, and see how she likes it...