The Monster at the End of This Book by Jon Stone

Hey, Story Seekers!

Whatever you do, do NOT turn the page.

Seriously.

There's a monster at the end of this book.

Grover has seen the title. Grover understands the danger. Grover has a plan.

Actually, Grover has several plans.

You are about to wreck every single one of them.

We're exploring The Monster at the End of This Book, written by Jon Stone and illustrated by Michael Smollin, the 1971 Sesame Street classic that turns the most ordinary thing you can do with a book into an act of open rebellion.

Turn the page.

Now, before we start, you should know where I'm standing. When somebody asks me what kind of funny I'm going for in my own books, this is the first one out of my mouth. Every time. Ahead of Seuss, ahead of Stinky Cheese Man, ahead of all of it.

So this isn't a neutral review. It's a thank-you note with a score attached.

Readit has received Grover's instructions.

"Don't turn the page."

Correct.

"I'm turning it."

Of course you are.

Book Breakdown

Look at the cover before we go in, because there's a joke there that has been running for fifty years and almost nobody catches it.

The title promises a monster at the end of the book.

Directly underneath, in smaller letters: starring lovable, furry old Grover.

The answer is printed on the front.

No child has ever noticed.

Inside, Grover discovers the alarming news. There is a monster at the end of this book. He is terrified.

His solution is perfectly reasonable.

Never get to the end.

All you have to do is stop turning pages.

Easy.

Except you're holding a book.

Jon Stone builds the entire story on that one ridiculous problem. Grover begs you to stop. You turn the page. Grover gets upset. So he ties the pages together.

You turn the page.

He tries nails.

You keep going.

Eventually the poor guy builds a brick wall.

You go through that too.

At this point we should probably acknowledge something. We are not behaving well. Grover is pleading with us. He is constructing actual infrastructure.

We don't care.

PAGE.

That's the engine. Stone makes the reader responsible for moving the story forward. Grover doesn't want the next thing to happen.

You do.

And every time you turn, Michael Smollin shows you what you just did to Grover's latest defense. Ropes don't quietly disappear. Barricades don't politely vanish. The pictures make it look as though the physical act of turning the page smashed through whatever he put in the way.

That's the trick, and it's why this still works. The book itself is part of the story.

Smollin also lets Grover's whole body talk. Worried, then pleading, then frantic, then completely spent. His size and position on the page keep shifting as the plans fail.

Then you reach the terrifying monster.

It's Grover.

He's relieved.

Then embarrassed.

I would be too.

For teachers and librarians: Lexile AD450L · ages 3 to 7, preschool through grade 2. Golden Books, first published 1971. The Little Golden Book edition is 24 pages; there's also a board book listed for ages 0 to 3. I could not find ATOS, AR or Fountas & Pinnell figures from a source I'd stand behind. The numbers floating around are labeled as estimates, so they're not here.

Jungle Jimmy's Journal

This book understands children better than most books written about children.

Tell a kid, "Don't push that button."

What have you done?

You have built a button-pushing machine.

Stone took that instinct and made an entire book out of it, and the reason it holds up is that Grover's attempts to stop you keep escalating. Rope. Nails. Masonry.

Which means the person reading it out loud has a real job.

You cannot read Grover like you're announcing boarding groups at the airport.

He's worried. Then desperate. Then completely beside himself.

Play it. If you can produce something resembling a Grover voice without needing throat surgery afterward, wonderful. If you can't, it genuinely doesn't matter. Give him panic and the kids will fill in the rest.

And here's the move that makes this book better than it has any right to be.

When Grover builds something across the page, make the page hard to turn.

Struggle with it. Ask the kid for help. "Oh boy. Grover really nailed this one shut."

Now the page turn is the performance. The child isn't watching a story. They're causing it.

After thirty years of working in front of children, that's the thing I keep coming back to and the thing I stole. A kid who has power over what happens next is a kid who is not going anywhere.

There's a real idea underneath the nonsense too, and Stone never once stops to explain it.

Grover spends the whole book terrified of something he has never seen. He doesn't know what the monster is. He knows the word, and he fills in the rest himself.

Then he arrives at the thing he's been dreading.

It's him.

All that panic. All those ropes. All those nails. That wall.

For nothing.

You can have a conversation about that if you want. Or you can laugh at Grover.

I recommend laughing at Grover first.

Readit's Review

I am turning EVERY PAGE.

Sorry, Grover.

Actually, I'm not sorry.

When he ties the pages together, I want to see if I can break the rope.

When he nails them shut?

Still turning it.

Then he builds a whole BRICK WALL.

Grover.

Come on.

You know I'm going through that wall.

Also, how did he build it so fast?

Does Grover know construction?

Where did he get the bricks?

And the monster is GROVER!

HE IS A MONSTER!

How did he forget that?

That is the funniest part. He spent the whole book being scared of himself.

I would read it again just so Grover has to build the wall again.

What Others Think

This has been around since 1971 and the reviews have several generations' fingerprints on them. Goodreads shows 4.46 out of 5 from 127,735 ratings and more than 3,600 written reviews.

The single best thing I found is from a grandfather.

Chris Haught: "I bought this for my grandbaby, in the interest of getting him away from electronics and into real books. We read it 4 times in the first sitting. Even then I had to cut him off so he could go home and get to bed."

Four times. One sitting. A fifty-year-old paper book with no battery in it, beating the screen.

Sophia Triad describes the sound it makes: "If you want to see your little ones not being able to stop giggling every time you dare to turn a page, then you need to get this book."

Every time you dare. That's the right verb.

Adults get strange about this one, and I love them for it. s.penkevich calls it "a master class in suspense and successful twist endings. Hollywood, take note." Sasha put it on a list titled Top 8 Most Shocking Twists In Literature, alongside Iain Banks and Shirley Jackson. Raizel's entire review is: "Riveting. Gave me goose bumps. A true page turner till the end."

And Kirk goes furthest, quoting the line and then treating it seriously: "I . . . am the monster." He calls it one of the most profound statements in literary history.

He's joking. Mostly.

Then there's Steven Stark, who did the one thing nobody does. He tried to obey Grover: "I decided to honor Grover's wish."

He lasted a few pages.

One honest note, and it's from a fan. s.penkevich also finds the book "oddly sadistic," since Grover is genuinely begging and we genuinely do not stop.

That's fair, and worth knowing if you have a very tender kid who takes a character's distress to heart. Most children find the power delicious. A few will feel bad for the guy.

If yours is the second kind, let them be the one who decides to stop, and see what happens.

Belly Laugh Scale

5 out of 5: Laugh-Out-Loud Legend

Third five I've handed out, and this one I'd defend in court.

Not because every sentence is a joke. Because the physical experience of reading the book is the joke.

Grover tells you not to do something.

You do it.

He reacts. He tries harder. You do it again.

Pretty soon you are demolishing a brick wall while a blue monster has a nervous breakdown, and then the thing he's been terrified of turns out to be him.

Setup, escalation, participation, payoff.

Fifty-plus years and nobody has improved on it.

Sorry, Grover.

PAGE.

Final Explorer Verdict

I'd recommend The Monster at the End of This Book for ages 3 to 7, and younger than that with the board book.

But reading ability isn't the deciding factor here.

Participation is.

This is a book for the kid who wants to touch the page. Turn it. Argue with the character. Disobey instructions. Help the grown-up fight through the rope and the nails and the wall.

And Michael Smollin deserves as much credit as Stone for making the game believable. Stone can tell us Grover blocked the book. Smollin has to make the page look blocked, and then make it look wrecked. Every failed defense becomes visual evidence of what the reader just did.

Which is why this still feels interactive with no button, no battery, no screen, no sound chip and no moving parts.

It's paper.

The moving part is the kid.

That idea is the whole reason Look! There Are No Dinos Inside Of This Book exists. Dangerous Dave insists there are no dinosaurs while the pictures cheerfully prove him wrong, and the kid gets to be the one who can see. Different joke, same debt.

I've never pretended otherwise.

Readit? Where are you going?

"Back to the beginning."

Grover isn't going to like that.

"I know."

Keep exploring, Story Seekers!

Jungle Jimmy & Readit