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Monster Night at Grandma's House
After spending many nights in fear, Toby decides to confront the monster which is probably lurking in the halls of his Grandma's house, in a tale first published in 1977.
32 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1977
About the author
Richard Peck
117 books733 followersRichard Peck was an American novelist known for his prolific contributions to modern young adult literature. He was awarded the Newbery Medal in 2001 for his novel A Year Down Yonder. For his cumulative contribution to young-adult literature, he received the Margaret A. Edwards Award from the American Library Association in 1990.
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
January 4, 2012
This was a story about a little boy who spends some nights at his Grandma’s house. Toby sleeps upstairs in the big house, while Grandma sleeps downstairs. Toby lets his imagination go CRAZY once he gets to his room. He is convinced there is a monster in the house trying to get him. He sees the shadows of the monster’s tail under the door, hears the claws of the monster scratching the stairs and the floors, feels the monster’s fiery breath over his bead, and sees the light of the monster’s fire breath. One night he decides to follow it downstairs to see if he can see it and make it leave Grandma’s house. He follows the signs of the monster out of his room, down the stairs, across the rooms, and out the door. He is so scared his eyes are closed much of the time. I did not like how the book ended at all however and neither did my son.
3 out of 5 stars here.
3 out of 5 stars here.
July 14, 2025
With Don Freeman’s memorable illustrations and Richard Peck’s nostalgic childhood narrative, Monster Night at Grandma’s House is an unusually spooky but daring picture book that I fell in love with as a kid, especially because I have no earthly idea where we got it or where it’s gotten to since. Despite its unusually ambiguous ending, this is a book that can help kids have the courage to conquer their fears of monsters and the dark, but it also challenges them with a mystery to puzzle over.
Toby loves spending every August with his grandma in her Victorian house, swinging on the porch swing and enjoying fresh-grown corn-on-the-cob. But Toby hates nighttime at Grandma’s house, when every creak and whisper sounds like a monster coming down the hallway. One fateful night, Toby is awakened by the sound of a Monster in his room, and he hides under the covers as it breathes fire at him. Summoning his courage, Toby chases the Monster out of the house and spends the night on the porch swing, guarding the house. The next morning, he awakens to find his grandma outside sweeping and the Monster’s pawprint still on the porch, having been scared off by Toby’s bravery.
At surface level, Monster Night at Grandma’s House seems pretty straightforward: it’s an empowerment tale, meant to encourage kids that they can stand up to the things that go bump in the night. Many writers would have ended this story with a cute tie-up, Toby finding logical explanations for all the noises and realizing that his imagination just ran away with him in the dark. Peck, however, takes the unconventional route: our story is left open-ended, not revealing whether the monster was real or not but heavily implying that it was. Readers can imagine any number of explanations about the ending — a real-life monster in the dark, Toby’s imagination, Toby sleepwalking, shapeshifting Grandma (my personal favorite) — but Peck focuses on the courage and perseverance of Toby no matter what the real explanation is. There’s a sense of weight behind Toby’s story, like this night has been building for a long time, and I think that’s a sentiment that most kids will be able to relate to.
There are certainly some unusual choices made on Peck’s part in how this story is told; it’s his only children’s picture book, whereas Freeman was an old pro by the time he worked on this book. Peck uses a lot more text than you might expect, with several full-page spreads of nothing but prose — it’s a bit unclear what age group Peck was aiming for with Monster Night at Grandma’s House, since the picture-book crowd is a bit young for the wordiness of this book. It’s also a bit spookier than your average children’s book, especially as the narrative progresses and the suspenseful tension builds. The very ambiguous ending feels a tad bit anticlimactic, though it certainly doesn’t detract from the sense of childlike wonder when Toby discovers the pawprint on the porch.
Don Freeman’s spooky, evocative illustrations are the real highlight of Monster Night at Grandma’s House. Sketched with India ink on a scratchboard with pale blue watercolor overlays, Freeman’s color palette is limited in a way that highlights all the light and shadows of a dark night in a spooky house. Above everything, I remembered Freeman’s almost Gothic illustrations and actually located the book online by identifying his work. Both Peck and Freeman do a great job of evoking the classic childhood vibes of staying with your grandparents in the summertime, having a blast but being terrified of the horrors that stalk you at night in that enormous, unfamiliar, shadow-drenched upstairs. Peck sprinkles some fantastic vivid details throughout the story, and both contributors achieve the stark contrast between day and night. The whole theme of journeying through a terrifying night into the comfort of morning is a timeless one, and both Peck and Freeman handle it beautifully.
There are definitely lessons at play in Monster Night at Grandma’s House, but Peck leaves those a bit ambiguous as well. He plays into the timeless “kids are afraid of the dark and monsters” trope, with all the lovely, fun things of daytime turning nightmarish at night. However, he expands on it by implying that, yes, monsters are real, but kids can be brave and stand up to their fears, protecting their homes in the process. (I don’t know that we should encourage our kids to sit on the front porch all night, but you get the idea.) We usually try to teach our kids that there’s nothing in the dark that wasn’t there in the light, but Peck’s bolder statement is that there’s nothing in the dark that you can’t be brave enough to face. More subtly, Peck incorporates the idea that Toby (who appears to be between six and eight years old) is starting to feel that he’s too big to still be scared of his dark room at night; that doesn’t make his fears any less real, but it definitely contributes to his desire to face up to his fears and sort of be the man of the house.
There’s lots of things I love about this little book (Toby’s glamorous grandma, the scrap quilt design, that one full-page illustration when Toby is creeping through the house), but it’s honestly special to me because it was one of those subliminal memories that I had completely forgotten until I started revisiting some of my childhood picture books. Peck and Freeman’s nostalgic mood is easily transferred to the reader as they each relive memories from their own childhoods. Even though I was never in Toby’s exact situation as a kid, I was in some similar enough ones to make reading Monster Night at Grandma’s House feel a little like coming home again.
Toby loves spending every August with his grandma in her Victorian house, swinging on the porch swing and enjoying fresh-grown corn-on-the-cob. But Toby hates nighttime at Grandma’s house, when every creak and whisper sounds like a monster coming down the hallway. One fateful night, Toby is awakened by the sound of a Monster in his room, and he hides under the covers as it breathes fire at him. Summoning his courage, Toby chases the Monster out of the house and spends the night on the porch swing, guarding the house. The next morning, he awakens to find his grandma outside sweeping and the Monster’s pawprint still on the porch, having been scared off by Toby’s bravery.
At surface level, Monster Night at Grandma’s House seems pretty straightforward: it’s an empowerment tale, meant to encourage kids that they can stand up to the things that go bump in the night. Many writers would have ended this story with a cute tie-up, Toby finding logical explanations for all the noises and realizing that his imagination just ran away with him in the dark. Peck, however, takes the unconventional route: our story is left open-ended, not revealing whether the monster was real or not but heavily implying that it was. Readers can imagine any number of explanations about the ending — a real-life monster in the dark, Toby’s imagination, Toby sleepwalking, shapeshifting Grandma (my personal favorite) — but Peck focuses on the courage and perseverance of Toby no matter what the real explanation is. There’s a sense of weight behind Toby’s story, like this night has been building for a long time, and I think that’s a sentiment that most kids will be able to relate to.
There are certainly some unusual choices made on Peck’s part in how this story is told; it’s his only children’s picture book, whereas Freeman was an old pro by the time he worked on this book. Peck uses a lot more text than you might expect, with several full-page spreads of nothing but prose — it’s a bit unclear what age group Peck was aiming for with Monster Night at Grandma’s House, since the picture-book crowd is a bit young for the wordiness of this book. It’s also a bit spookier than your average children’s book, especially as the narrative progresses and the suspenseful tension builds. The very ambiguous ending feels a tad bit anticlimactic, though it certainly doesn’t detract from the sense of childlike wonder when Toby discovers the pawprint on the porch.
Don Freeman’s spooky, evocative illustrations are the real highlight of Monster Night at Grandma’s House. Sketched with India ink on a scratchboard with pale blue watercolor overlays, Freeman’s color palette is limited in a way that highlights all the light and shadows of a dark night in a spooky house. Above everything, I remembered Freeman’s almost Gothic illustrations and actually located the book online by identifying his work. Both Peck and Freeman do a great job of evoking the classic childhood vibes of staying with your grandparents in the summertime, having a blast but being terrified of the horrors that stalk you at night in that enormous, unfamiliar, shadow-drenched upstairs. Peck sprinkles some fantastic vivid details throughout the story, and both contributors achieve the stark contrast between day and night. The whole theme of journeying through a terrifying night into the comfort of morning is a timeless one, and both Peck and Freeman handle it beautifully.
There are definitely lessons at play in Monster Night at Grandma’s House, but Peck leaves those a bit ambiguous as well. He plays into the timeless “kids are afraid of the dark and monsters” trope, with all the lovely, fun things of daytime turning nightmarish at night. However, he expands on it by implying that, yes, monsters are real, but kids can be brave and stand up to their fears, protecting their homes in the process. (I don’t know that we should encourage our kids to sit on the front porch all night, but you get the idea.) We usually try to teach our kids that there’s nothing in the dark that wasn’t there in the light, but Peck’s bolder statement is that there’s nothing in the dark that you can’t be brave enough to face. More subtly, Peck incorporates the idea that Toby (who appears to be between six and eight years old) is starting to feel that he’s too big to still be scared of his dark room at night; that doesn’t make his fears any less real, but it definitely contributes to his desire to face up to his fears and sort of be the man of the house.
There’s lots of things I love about this little book (Toby’s glamorous grandma, the scrap quilt design, that one full-page illustration when Toby is creeping through the house), but it’s honestly special to me because it was one of those subliminal memories that I had completely forgotten until I started revisiting some of my childhood picture books. Peck and Freeman’s nostalgic mood is easily transferred to the reader as they each relive memories from their own childhoods. Even though I was never in Toby’s exact situation as a kid, I was in some similar enough ones to make reading Monster Night at Grandma’s House feel a little like coming home again.
December 30, 2015
The illustrations are fantastic, with all the personality and expert detail you would expect from Don Freeman, but the story itself is unnecessarily wordy. It goes off on random tangents and includes details that don't add to the story.
It's also weirdly ambiguous about the nature of the monster. It plays so close to the "it's not real--or is it?" line that instead of chuckling at Toby defeating a monster that was only in his mind, I feel like I'm reading my kids Stephen King lite. Yeah, there's a happy ending, but 98% of the book is still the words "lumbering," "oozing," "loathsome," and "monster."
Those pictures, though.
It's also weirdly ambiguous about the nature of the monster. It plays so close to the "it's not real--or is it?" line that instead of chuckling at Toby defeating a monster that was only in his mind, I feel like I'm reading my kids Stephen King lite. Yeah, there's a happy ending, but 98% of the book is still the words "lumbering," "oozing," "loathsome," and "monster."
Those pictures, though.
July 1, 2017
This book didn't catch my attention at all, which is kind of sad since it had an interesting title that could have been full of possibility.
The book was too wordy for a young children's book while there would be a set of pages that were all words and no pictures. In my opinion this would maybe be a better book for an older child than anything one who is younger and whose attention may wander.
The book was too wordy for a young children's book while there would be a set of pages that were all words and no pictures. In my opinion this would maybe be a better book for an older child than anything one who is younger and whose attention may wander.
March 17, 2019
Not what I was hoping it would be. This really left a lot to be desired. I love that Peck tried, but I feel like writing for a younger crowd, someone who would be interested in a picture book, just wasn't within his skill set. I love Peck to pieces, but this one is my least favorite. Wordy, yes, anti-climactic. Problematic. But another strong grandma, yes.
November 10, 2017
Toby was spending the night at Grandma's house. Day times were fine, but night times were spooky. First off the stairs creaked, he slept upstairs far away from his grandma downstairs, and there were monsters in the night. But he faced up to them, bravely going downstairs to confront them.
September 25, 2010
Richard Peck has written a a picture book! This is such a fun book that every child can relate to.
January 29, 2015
Great book!!
February 14, 2018
This a very cute story. Perfect bedtime reading.
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June 22, 2010signed & inscribed by author
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April 12, 2017thi book was about a kid who thinks there is a monster in his room but turns out theres not.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews