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Memento Monstrum by Jochen Till Book Review

Now, you're wondering, why in the world are you recording this for the third time? Well, the first time I recorded this, I realized the quality was a little crappy, and I just doawled on recording it. So, then earlier today, I was like, well, let me re-record it so I can get this book out because it's a super cute, fun book. And then I recorded the entire 16-minute episode on mute as well as the following episode that I had recorded as well. So, I have spent the past probably 45 minutes recording on mute. So, I love that for myself.

So, I'm glad I have plenty of coffee to get me through it as we talk about Momento Monstrm, which is by Joan. It's either Join or Josen Till and it is Bedtime Tales with Grandpa Dracula, where every night becomes a monster tale. Now, this is book number one, and I have looked into the fact that there are at least two or three more. So, this book was originally released in the German language. This is one of the first what I would call German literature books that I have picked up here lately, or at least for this channel, and I had such a fun time with this book.

It is short. It's about 200 pages, and some of those pages are illustrations. Now, I had the Kindle edition, so I was only able to see some of the pictures really pretty small. They didn't even take up the full size of my screen, but I was able to see some of the pictures and illustrations. And I kind of think I want to go find the like the hard coverver edition or at least the physical edition and check out the pictures in there as well because I mean this cover is so darn cute.

And so, as we can see, Grandpa Dracula is a little bat. He He and his grandchildren are bats, and they are adorable, fuzzy little creatures. Now, you're probably like, "Okay, yeah, Dracula can turn into a bat. I mean, so what?" Well, the thing is is it's a kids book. This is a kids bookmade book. And one of the things I kind of think about this book is that I think it's intended to help kids not be so scared of some of those classic movie monsters. And so we get Dracula as a cute little bat. Maybe kids are scared of bats. Um I mean I don't I'm not scared of them. I think they're cute, but I haven't really run across that many in my life.

However, you know, then we get like the fishman and then we get what do we get? We get like little zombies and we get big spider kind of like what I would call aragg, you know, the big the big spider. Um and then we get a werewolf and then we get um an invisible man. So, we get some creatures like that along the way in this particular story, which I don't want to say is intended to desensitize children. I think it's a fun and cute way. It's a playful way to introduce them to some of the classic movie monsters.

And like if you ever go back and watch some of those old movies, the ones that are maybe in black and white or barely in color, they're pretty campy. Like the the um the cinematography of it's not what we expect maybe today. Um but there's still like a classic nostalgia to them. And I liked it. I like this book. Like there's something about vampires in general for me that I always have found intriguing, just fascinating. Like I love that they're all a little different throughout pop culture and throughout their descriptions and their histories and how they're portrayed, but there's like there's a similarity in like a little bit of a vein that runs through that um seems to like resonate on all levels of like this is what a vampire is.

Um, and in this particular book, he is a 589year-old little bat who is spending the weekend taking care of his grandkids while his wife and daughter are out of town. So, they start off by going to the library and they decide they're going to build a library fort or a book fort. And one of the books they happen to run across while they're doing their stacking and all that sort of stuff is a photo album or like you know a book of pictures and stories and such where like Dracula has like all these met all these people throughout his life.

And so his grandkids don't know who these people are. They've of course they've not been around for nearly as many years as Dracula has. And I'm assuming at this particular point that even though Dracula is portrayed as being like again 589 years old, he his grandkids are potentially potentially um the age they seem to be. Like if Beanie is six, then I assume she's really six years old. And if Beanie's brother is like the 13-year-old kind of like um brooding kid who's always playing on his phone, then I just assume he's that age.

So, we've got these three kids. Well, I didn't mention the older kid. I think her name is Vera. Vera Vra, maybe. Um anyway, we've got the three kids and they they're fascinated by what their grandfather has done in his life. So they start looking at the pictures and so one of the pictures is they're like, "Oh, grandpa, did you date a Yeti?" And he's like, "No, no, we didn't, you know, it wasn't like that. She was my friend." And so he tells them the story of how he met Yeti and the adventures they went on.

And so throughout the book, that's what we're getting is we get to see these pictures of Dracula with various other friends throughout his life. and he tells his grandkids the stories that are associated with those kids or with those um beings or creatures or what have you. So, with Yeti, um I just thought it started off so fun because Dracula has decided that he's going to go into hiding a little bit. He's going to take on an alias and not be Dracula anymore.

And so, who does he become? But he becomes Sherlock Holmes. Like he it's not like he's taking out the OG Sherlock Holmes and like getting in his place. No, no. It's like Dracula is Sherlock Holmes and ultimately it seems as though Watson is actually Yeti. Well, from what I can understand in this particular book, I don't remember them going on really any big adventures. But when Dracula is in his apartment at um 221B Baker Street, he has an upstairs neighbor who is literally sounds like they're like pounding on the floor.

So he goes up to find out what's going on and he discovers with the door slightly a jar that he doesn't open it. just the door is slightly a jar from the p from the jumping I guess that it is a yeti who is dancing and he says that she's she's one of the most beautiful dancers he's ever seen. So he gets this idea of hey if you want to be a dancer I know this guy in Paris who runs a dance troop or runs a theater and I bet you he would put you in his show.

And so they off they go to Paris and well they audition and at first he's like you didn't tell me she was this yeti. He's like no no no you got to understand she is better than the best dancers you've ever seen. Better than Pavlova. And he's like no. And so he watches her dance and he's like in awe. He like burst into tears and he's like clapping. He's like so excited. He's like yes. This is what I've been looking for.

Well, comes to be like the opening night and he wants her to change like not Dracula, but the guy who like leads a theater. He wants her to he wants to like shave her whole body and to be more of the image of what he thinks a ballerina should look like. Well, Yeti's not on board with that, but she does still dance. And even though there is one heckler one in the whole audience, everyone else is absolutely blown away. So she does a fantastic job of dancing and everybody loves it and she gets a pretty much a standing ovation except for that one guy.

Um but she does decide that she this is not what she's going to pursue anymore. Um this is not her calling even though she's kind of done what she wanted to do. um she knows that like the stigma of being a yeti in ballet is probably not going to work out for her career, so she decides to leave. And so now that's when her and Dracula kind of go their separate ways. Um still friends, but you know, off they go in different directions to pursue their next adventures.

Well, we do get to li get a little bit about um Dracula's um oh, Van Helsing. So, Van Helsing is at this point. And so, this may be a tiny bit of a spoiler, but really it's not a spoiler, but we do learn pretty quickly that Van Helsing, who is, you know, hunting Dracula through the ages, is really a zombie, and he's a a little bit of an undead. And so as the stories progress, he's kind of falling apart pretty consistently and he does a terrible job of trying to catch Dracula. Like he's really bad at it.

So um and they don't even remember like why Venh was really like hunting for Dracula anymore. Like they don't remember what the the like what the trigger was that made Van Helsing want to hunt for Dracula. But anyway, um it's just kind of cute because we do kind of get these moments where like Van Helsing like pops up and he's like, "Haha, I've caught you." And then of course he flubs it like a very bad little secret agent or something. He's just really bad at catching Dracula.

Uh, but along the way we also get characters such as um I think his name is Bubba the fish monster, but ultimately he was supposed to be Dracula's pet. And it does seem as though if you accidentally get some Dracula blood or vampire blood in a living creature and um they something happens to them that makes them change like the the blood makes them a little bit different. So that's kind of how the fish Mr. Bubba, he um goes from being just a pet fish to a whole talking living being and having a life of his own as well.

Then we have the werewolf who going back to the teenage grandson constantly playing on this phone uh this game that in my mind I guess I had just pictured something like Angry Birds where he um he constantly needs silver bullets so he can fight off the werewolf in his game. Well, he's got this big kind of like thing against werewolves. So, he runs across a picture where his grandfather where Dracula is hanging out with a werewolf.

And he's like, "Oh my god, I can't believe you were hanging out with a werewolf." And Dracula's like, "Do you think they're all bad?" And he's like, "Well, yeah, of course they're all bad." And it's like, "Let me tell you this story about this guy." And so, he does come to learn that werewolves are not all bad. Um, and I think that's like a good way to kind of like help someone who's got like this bias um, maybe overcome it a little bit and to kind of try to see things from other people's perspective. So, that was really fun as well.

Now, in that particular story with the werewolf, um, we do see Dracula and the werewolf u playing in a very familiar band called the Beatles. And yes, that would be with Paul and Ringo and John and all the others. And I think at this particular, well, actually, I don't think Ringo was in the band yet. I think it was Pete. I think it was, is it Pete Best? Anyway, it was before Ringo was their drummer. And so that's where the werewolf was kind of being a a bit of a standin because he was such a good drummer.

But the only thing is is that he's only a good drummer when he's a werewolf. He's not a good drummer when he's in regular human form. So, in order to be a better drummer, he does consume some of Dracula's blood in order to h get that little bit of a special ability in order to maybe utilize it to his advantage.

Uh, we also have a, like I said, a giant spider. And I want to say that it might be Bubba the fish man who um ultimately marries this giant spider and she becomes a very good friend as well. And then there is an invisible man who's actually like he kind of works for like something like the CIA or MI5 or whatever those secret agent secret agencies are. And um and since he's invisible, he's really good at it, too.

But he like gets captured at one point and then him and but he also he's the invisible man, but he's also like a mummy because when he gets unwrapped, he is a mummy or well, when he's unwrapped, he's invisible, but when he's all wrapped up, he's a mummy. Um so it's a little bit of both worlds when we when it comes to that particular character.

It's very cozy, and I just thought it was very witty. had a great time reading this book and I do think it is a really good way um to maybe introduce kids to like I said classic movie monsters. Now from my personal perspective it is word dense for a younger read. So when in a lot of kids books some of the paragraphs are shorter and the text is a little bit bigger. It just makes it easier to read as you're flipping through. This might be a little bit for an older crowd only because the text is pretty dense.

Um, and so maybe a like a younger kid might not like be able to read it as easily as a kid that's been reading for a little while. So, it could be a fun one to read out loud to a kid if you thought that that might be a good option for you. But um I do recommend it. I had a lot of fun with it. Yes, it is probably for gosh I would say under 10 or 12 years old, but because I enjoy these kind of books and I tend to try to look at these books as would I recommend it to my my um for my niece or nephew, would I recommend it to my kids or my friends for their kids?

Um, if any of those are yes, because for this particular book, it's definitely a yes. I have at least one friend I could add this to my Amazon cart for or whatever, wherever I wanted to purchase it. Um, to gift to them for their children, then um I'm always glad that I've read it.

But uh now this book did re it first released January 1st of 2020. However, because this it was originally translated from German to English, I think that's why Netgi had it gosh within the past little while or so. I know I read it in the month of October. I'm just a little delayed on getting my review out, but I did do my like my Goodreads review back in October. I just dropped the ball on re-recording the episode when I needed to.

So hopefully you will consider it. It was great for It's not necessarily needed for spooky season, which is kind of what I call that time around like Halloween, but it works well for that time period because of the classic monsters that are within it. But with all of that being said, I'm going to go ahead and leave it here and let you guys decide if this is a book that you're interested in.

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