The first thing that I fell for, was the aesthetics. The images feels enormous, like they're keep on continuing even outside the pages of the book. The monster in the book, the lonely beast, is charming. The story is cute, and kind of "down to earth". It's a book about loneliness, the search after belonging and friends and, maybe, the book want to point out something really important: the fact that you are famous does not insure a life of happiness. The true happiness, rather, is to be part of something beautiful, like a friendship. ( )

I absolutely adored this book. The illustrations were phenomenal, there would be a handful of different things going on in each page but the other split the pages up into sections to show the beast in different sections of his journey. This helped to keep the story more interactive and even added humor. In one point of the story he was swimming in the ocean but began to sink, as a reader I thought he was going to drown but once he sank to the very bottom he began to walk on the ocean floor. The pictures showed that he ran into jellyfish, an octopus, sea turtles and one very mean clam. Once the Beast got to the city he made lots of friends and was in charge of the Central Park garden. He loved this for a very short time but he still felt lonely because he went on this journey to find the other beasts of the world. He felt that he needed to go back to his home and once there he was welcomed by all the other beasts' that have traveled far and wide because they were lonely to find him! This story lets the reader know that everyone has their own special place and it is alright to feel lonely sometimes as long as you do something about it. The beast was proactive and set off on a journey to solve his problem of loneliness and when he felt homesick, the then returned back to his forest where he knew he belonged. ( )

Quite the intrepid beast. ( )