Monster Hunting For Beginners: the funniest new children’s fantasy series - the perfect summer read for kids!: Book 1

Pre-ordered this book for my sons 8th birthday (conveniently also called Jack!) and he is really enjoying it! He's currently about a quarter of the way in. It's easy to read/follow, but with enough new and challenging words for him to be learning new stuff at the same time! A few pictures dotted throughout. And it's funny... which he loves! A really great book (arguably aim more towards boys) that is super fun. I would definitely recommend it to anyone who has a child that likes stories of monsters, magic, dragons and adventure etc. I've just pre-ordered book 2, which is conveniently due just ahead of his next birthday!

A fantasy novel for younger readers. Ideal age would be eight and up. There is some dealing with grief in it.It runs for two hundred and ninety pages. It has short chapters which aren't numbered. There are illustrations and the print is quite large, so it is a very easy read.It is one of those books that reads complete and self contained, but leaves the door open for more adventures at the end. And those will be forthcoming.Jack, who narrates the whole thing in the first person, is an ordinary boy who lives with his dad. Who has tried to make him ultra cautious and risk adverse since his mother died. Jack is not especially brave as a result. But when his dad vanishes, and a hitherto unknown aunt shows up, Jack finds monsters are real. He ends up as the apprentice of monster hunter Stoop, and wild adventure results.It has the occasional foot note as well. So you could, if you were lazy, call this Pratchettesque. But that's a bit too easy to say because it does try to find it's own tone, and in the end, it does succeed. It is light in tone and with humour, which is always solid rather than laugh out loud funny. It gets from the real world into a more fantastical one. And then it really gets going.What's good about it is the plotting, as the way things come together in the last third shows it knew what it wanted to do all along, and makes you look at earlier moments again in a new light. And Jack's character arc just unfolds nicely and at a natural pace, never hammering home any messages.I did like how it handled Ogres, getting some clever and funny writing out of them not being the sharpest tools in the box. All in all, it zips by nicely and does become a worthwhile reading experience. It is the kind of thing you could read as a bedtime story also. And there's a fun quiz at the back which gets the tone of it's humour right.A good little book, and on the basis of this, the next in the series should be worth a look.

My Daughter loved this book

I read this with my 5 year old and she absolutely adored it. Highly recommend

Very well written and kids are loving it so far (2 boys aged 9 and 11) and I'm kinda liking it myself (41) lol recommend 😀

“My name’s Jack, and I’m a monster hunter.” At least by the end of the book he is a monster hunter. At the beginning of the book Jack is “some weedy kid with glasses who couldn’t stick up for himself when it mattered” but through circumstances he becomes “an apprentice monster hunter who had a catapult and wasn’t afraid to use it.” And part of his apprenticeship is a magic book called “Monster Hunting for Beginners”. At least that is what it is called initially until he advances beyond beginner because it can magically change its title (wait for book 2 in the series to see what to).Jack’s dad disappears, an Aunt Prudence comes along and takes over his household but acts very strange and an ogre comes along. Then a monster hunter called Stoop introduces himself to Jack, impressed with the way he has handled the ogre. “I’ve been hunting monsters for two hundred years now, and that’s quite long enough. I want to put my feet up, but I can’t retire until I find someone suitable to take my place. Them’s the rules. That’s where you come in. I’m going to teach you all I know.”And so the adventure begins. The book is quirky. It has illustrations and manageable chapters. Jack narrates. He has a tendency to asterisk a lot of things which breaks up the flow a bit for me, but it is okay. The cover shows Jack with his catapult flanked by Stoop ahead of him holding the “Monster Hunting for Beginners” book, and Nancy behind him, a fearless girl he meets in the story who joins the adventure. Also on the cover is an ogre in the background with Aunt Prudence standing on his shoulder trying to get him to do lots of bad things.Overall 4 stars.

My 9 year old daughter loved reading this together.

Monster Hunting for Beginners strikes a really good balance between being easy to read and not too intimidating vs feeling like a more grown up progression from kids books. The text is well written in plain, easily understandable, English. The spacing is generous without having an overly large type size, and the blend between normal text and the occasionally highlighted word in a heavier font makes keeping pace quite easy. The story is engaging, and enjoyable. This is a great example of a really good book to use as a transition up to a higher level of reading.

Lectura fácil para niños, buen tamaño de letra.