Monster Nanny by Tuutikki Tolonen was a delight to read. My son and I read this together for a bed-time read and he absolutely loved it and wanted to read it again. We will be reading more books by this author and I recommend this book to all parents who enjoy a bit of fun and laughter.

What if your parents won a dream trip including a full qualified nanny to watch you and your siblings? Its an opportunity most parents would jump at and it is just such an opportunity this book is about. This story is from the view point of the children who are in the care of a monster nanny. The children are determined to find out as much about this creature as they can. I think this is a perfect book for middle aged readers, my girls found it quite humorous.

I was intrigued by the cover of this one and given the fun of unusual nanny stories I figured it was worth a shot. It didn't do much for me, though. The language is awkward and distancing.

It was the title of the book that caught my attention. I requested the title and was granted the privilege to read this ARC. Thank you Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Children's Group for granting this request.
This book was fun to read through all 306 pages. It reminds me of The Boxcar Children who found themselves were in charge of their lives making a home in the woods. The children in this story get to make the decisions without parent's input or might I say interference. So where are the parents? The Hellman children's dad, aka the invisible voice, is stranded by a blizzard while away on a business trip. The mother has won an all expense paid trip to Lapland where she will be pampered with spa treatments. The prize comes with a monster nanny to watch over the children. The mother thinks long and guard about leaving her children in the care of a monster. But the lure of the vacation and assurance the monster is well trained in the care of children, she consented. Grah is the name of the Hellman children's monster nanny. He's calm, kind and very dusty. He even cooks for the children, but not very well. The Hellman children, Hally, Koby and Mimi, are eleven years old and younger. Desiring more information about monsters, the children learn more about Grah from an ancient book they check out from the library. Yay, they went to the library for information, not Google. The mystery and adventure increases as they discover other children in the neighbourhood are also being cared for by a hairy, dusty monster. Each monster has its own personality quirks. Oh and the monsters don't talk, making communication difficult.
The illustrations create a warm heart for the children and for the little hairy guy, although he is quite dusty. I felt a twinge of sorrow for Grah as he stands in the closet patiently waiting for what comes next.
I can't end my review without mentioning the talking bathrobe. The little blue bathrobe takes shape and talks, but only to MiMi. The others know about her talking bathrobe and indulge her. When the talking bathrobe begins to offer words of Wisdom, the classic line of the book is, "Can the bathrobe be trusted?"
Tolonen seamlessly intertwines contemporary life with a world full of strange creatures. Monster Nanny is a return to timeless adventure.

What a wonderful, wonderful book – written ostensibly for children, but I suspect many an adult will fall in love with it too. The mother of Halley (11), Koby (9) and Mimi (6) has won an all-expenses paid trip to a spa in Lapland. To make it easy for her to get away, the prize organisers have supplied a nanny to look after the kids. Their father – perpetually away on business, and referred to as “The Invisible Voice” – is expected home at any time. The only problem with this, is that the nanny is a very dusty monster – oh, and every mother in the street has won a similar prize (and monster!), fathers are few and far between. So, most of the children in the neighbourhood are to be left (human) adultless for two weeks in the charge of never-seen-before, big, hairy monsters, who come with an introductory piece of paper stating that they are harmless, trained for childcare and domestic duties, don’t speak, like TV and will sleep in a closet.
In these days of safe-guarding children, alarm bells would start ringing – don’t the parents ever talk to each other? Where have the monsters come from, and who decided they were harmless and well trained? To say they are part of an “experiment” does not really cut the mustard. However, that would be unnecessary nit-picking, and spoil an excellent story. All the mothers go off to Lapland, the monsters move in, and the “Invisible Voice” gets caught in a blizzard.
Thankfully, the children come from a long line of imminently capable fictional kids – think Famous Five, Pippi Long Stocking etc. – who don’t really need adults around. They realise that they need to find out more about monsters. Koby is a reader (as all great kids are), so he sends Halley to the library (no googling on a computer, a Library!), and miraculously she happens on the one and only book written about monsters such as their nanny, Grah. Armed with Runar’s treatise on monsters, and the advice of Mimi’s talking bathrobe, the children organise the neighbourhood, take good care of the monsters, trap the blood-sucking fairy-frog, and learn about the evils of indentured servitude and freedom.
The children are beautifully captured by the author: the sibling interactions, the relationships with their parents, their resilience and the ready acceptance of the unknown and unusual.
It is the youngest, Mimi, and her talking bathrobe (only she can hear it) who make the most headway with understanding the monsters: “Mimi: Do they want to go back to . . . er. Wherever they came from? Bathrobe: Naturally. Everybody wants to go back home. They don’t really fit in here … And people usually start to tease and bully anybody who is different … A monster is a monster, not a nanny. Understand?”. Soon, Mimi has everyone working to help the monsters. However, “Can the bathrobe be trusted? Does a sensible human being rely on the advice of a bathrobe? If the bathrobe said that the solution was to be found in the book, could one be sure? And what if it wasn’t?” The book supports the bathrobe: “The monster would not choose to be slave labor for humans. Regular human work would be alien to its free, wild nature”.
When the Invisible Voice unexpectedly makes an appearance, neither he, nor the children quite know what to make of each other: “It was already clear that visible Dad was unpredictable. He might speak at any time and interrupt whenever he wanted. Who knew, he might even start giving the children good advice or tell them off”. Thankfully, he is happy to go along with what the children already have in hand: ““So, what we actually have here is a monsters’ liberation camp”, Dad said. Halley and Koby nodded. “Exactly””.
So, an amazingly inventive and original story, with a solid moral underpinning. What more could you want in a children’s book?

This was an odd story that I didn't really connect with. Halley, Koby and Mimi are three young siblings. Their mother won a vacation to Lapland and part of the prize was to provide a nanny, a monster nanny. The nanny was delivered with one page of instructions. It was a strange, hairy, dusty beast which reminded me a bit of Cousin It from the Adam's Family. It spend a lot of time in the closet, didn't speak, but did not seem dangerous. Mimi, the youngest child is a bit strange. She talks to a blue bathrobe, so it is no surprise that she developed some sort of communication with the Monster. When it was discovered that other children in the neighbourhood also had a Monster Nanny and that their parents had won a trip, they banded together to try and figure out where they came from, what they eat, what the needed to get home.

The monsters had their own language, habits and families. The children worked together to take care of each other and offer some solutions. It was nice that the children figured out that the Monsters needed something and helped them determine what it was. There were black and white illustrations scattered throughout the book that were cute and gave you an idea of what the kids and the monsters looked like. They were not scary looking at all. A cute book, that middle grade students that like monsters might enjoy.

This is a really fun, and rather fantastical tale, of some children who are sent a nanny in the form of a monster! The text is well spaced for young readers, with chapters of a good length and broken up well with black and white illustrations. This is quite a long book, so would be great for readers that are past following their educational reading format and are on to choosing their own books and are developing confidence in that area. With a nice triumphant ending, this is sure to be an enjoyable read for children. It would also be lovely for parents to read with children, a chapter or two at night-time and enjoy the experience together.

Very cute and interesting book that I would highly recommend to anyone.

Monster Nanny by Tolonen unfortunately was not a book that grabbed and held my attention. There were elements of family connections and development that were intriguing, but I just couldn't get attached to the characters or story line. It was a little strange and might be the perfect book for some, but it was not for me.

With the author's name being Tuutikki, this Moomin Troll-fan reviewer was instantly drawn to Monster Nanny. This charming book is a nice chapter reader/light fantasy mystery that would appeal to elementary school aged children as a chapter-a-night bedtime read. The mysteries of the gentle, though rather troll-like monsters are not completely resolved (this is, after all, only the first in a series). The three main children characters, Halley, Koby and Mimi, are all well developed. Mimi is especially endearing, as is Blue Bathrobe. Grah is a lovable and amusing character. There is nothing really scary in these books, other than some very pesky mosquito fairies and three rather creepy ladies who seem likely to reappear in a future book.

Finnish author Tuutikki Tolonen and illustrator Pasi Pitkänen have created a gentle and imaginative story, much in the style of Tove Jansson's Moomin Trolls and Hayao Miyazki's Totoro. Not a lot action takes place but the charming world, laconic "monster" and pragmatic children make for a nostalgic picture of childhood in quieter times.

When mom wins a trip for a relaxing weekend away from the kids, a monster comes to stay, but it doesn't come without instructions. There is a book that tells the kids all about the care of the monster. Strange things begin to happen when more monsters show up, but not all is as it seems.

I was really intrigued by the whole monster nanny concept. At one point I started to think, "is this monster really a grandma transformed, and its trying to tell the kids?" But no, it was not as I thought. Things started to get strange when the bathrobe began to talk. I'm all for strange, but around the last quarter of the book, I felt like the whole story flip flopped and turned into something else. It didn't feel like it stuck with the whole paranormal feel of the first three quarters of the story and it turned into something more scifi. The ending was pleasant, but not the reveal I hoped it would be.

All in all, it wasn't bad. If I hadn't lost interest toward the end I would have rated it higher. Three stars for Monster Nanny.

This review was written by Confessions of an Ex-Ballerina http://www.exballerina.com