The Yeti Files: Monsters on the Run by Kevin Sherry, 124 pp, RL 2.0


Last year I gleefully reviewed The Yeti Files: Meet the Bigfeet by Kevin Sherry. I am so thrilled to be reviewing Monsters on the Run, the second book in what I hope is a long running series about all kinds of cryptids!

Besides the fact that The Yeti Files: Meet the Bigfeet taught me the word "cryptid," which I work into conversations whenever I can now, I adore this book for its humor, creativity, generous illustrations, and easy readability. The Yeti Files is definitely a high interest for lower reading levels and it allows me to hook so many different kids, from struggling readers to disinterested readers to picky readers. As a librarian at a school where more than a third of students are not reading at grade level, I adore a book like The Yeti Files.

In the first book, we were introduced to narrator Blizz Richards, yeti and a cryptozoologist who works to keep cryptids safe and hidden. We get to see his lair, which is supercool, and learn more about cryptids. In the first book, Blizz helps his cousin Brian Bigfoot, who has abandoned his AMAZING tree house compound after the bumbling cryptozoologist George Vanquist photographs Brian and splashes it all over the front page of the papers. 


In Monsters on the Run (for which I have no interior images - these are all from book 1) Blizz gets a distress letter from Nessie, the Loch Ness Monster. Nessie is lonely, and after trekking to Scotland on a bicycle built for three (Blizz's preferred form of transportation, the unicorn Jack Saturday, is busy competing in the Rings of Alicornia playoffs) Blizz and the gang see why. The loch is filled with a tussle of turtles, a frolic of frogs, a summer school of fish "dumb old boat parts," and seaweed for miles.



Alex, Blizz's elfin assistant, discovers that Nessie is actually a plesiosaur and, with the help of his buddy, leprechaun Tobin Clover, living just across the water in Ireland, they will find a friend for Nessie. Sherry is a master of diagrams, cutaways and ancient maps and his illustrations always delight. Tobin's underground home is almost as cool as Bizz's lair. Using the strands of the rainbow and his pot (for gold?) Tobin travels through time and saves beautiful art and artifacts that are about to be destroyed. He agrees to take the gang back to the prehistoric ages to find a friend for Nessie but things don't go quite as planned and the cryptids find themselves in a whole heap of danger.

Sherry sets up book three at the end of Monsters on the Run when an urgent call comes across the Cryptotron from Atlantis. It looks like the Kraken is returning...

Source: Review Copy



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