Little Monsters Cookbook

Gr 3—5—This cookbook strikes a familiar tone, mixing humor with gentle gore. Each of the 6 sections is named after a different scary creature, with a total of 30 recipes. Front matter offers general cooking guidelines as well as safety information. Some of the recipes are super simple, like "Vampire Bites" (basically apple slices, peanut butter, and slivers of almonds, assembled in a way to resemble a mouth with fangs). Others are more complicated. "Wrap Like a Mummy" is a chicken and mushroom dish that uses puff pastry and requires careful folding and decorating. There are recipes for entrees, snacks, and sweets, with a large color photo of the finished dish accompanying each one. Spiral-bound, the book will easily lie flat. Nutritional information is not included, and there is no index. Cute but not essential, this specialty cookbook will probably be popular, but smaller collections already holding Sharon Bowers's Ghoulish Goodies: a Frightful Cookbook (Storey Publishing, 2009) can probably take a pass.—Lauralyn Persson, Wilmette Public Library, IL