Leonardo the Terrible Monster

Leonardo the Terrible Monster is written and illustrated by popular children’s book author Mo Willems. This book is targeted at kindergarten and first grade students. The humor incorporated into the text and the silliness within the illustrations will capture the hearts of young readers.

Rating: 5 out of 5 Stars *****

Summary: Leonardo is not a very scary monster but longs to be just as scary as his fellow monsters. He sets out to find a suitable suspect to scare but instead of wanting to be scary he just wants to be a good friend to a little lonely boy Sam.

The two major themes of this book, friendship and acceptance, are great ideas to discuss within a younger classroom such as kindergarten and first grade. This book tells the simple story of what it means to be a friend and how to go about accepting people who may seem to be an outcast. Kindergarten and first grade are the first years where students come together in a setting to start to form friendships. It is important to enforce the ideas behind friendship at an early age so students are properly exposed to what it means to have a friendship and accepting others. This heartwarming tale is classroom must have!

This book can easily fit into a unit about friendship and can further lead into classroom discussions about what I means to be a good friend through charts or lists. It can also be geared in another direction such as conflict resolution and how to manage problems within a circle of friends.

Visit Mo Willems Website to see more hilarious and useful books for the classroom. Willems makes it easy to incorporate a sense of humor into the classroom with still making it possible to connect to an important concept. Click Here!