The Voice of a Crocodile

I love this description of a monster's voice, by Aneeqa from Bridge Junior School in Leicester.

When it tries to talk he has a croaky voice, like the voice of a crocodile if crocodiles could speak! “Will you help me?” It croaks. “I am the three eyed yeti!” I’m so scared. I can’t scream!

Even though crocodiles can't speak, the writing is so good that I can imagine exactly what Aneeqa's monster looks like.

I like Ria's sentence:

It will eat grilled animals and roast children!

By adding the way that her monster prepares his prey, Ria has made the fact that the monsters eat animals and children extra lively.

I enjoyed Zaid's sentence:

My monster smells nice like a world made of soap. 

I really like the idea of a world made of soap and I'm imagining walking through it sniffing all the trees and even the dustbins! Zaid has also thought of a great monster name: the Teragonasaurus. Ahmad came up with a similar name, which is equally good: Monstrasaurus.

Mustafa has used some great similes for describing his monster, The Hairy Horn:

He wears a boot on one leg no one knows why. His boot is as smelly as a jacket potato filled with mouldy cheese and out of date beans. His hair looks like a sharp spiky iron fence.

The elaborate smell and spiky fence imagery paint a very vivid picture in my mind.

Seema and Sadiyah's descriptions of monster hair are further examples of brilliant imagery:

The bunny monster species have deep, pink hair that look like bowls of noodles. 

The Mermaid monster shakes her blue hair that looks like a bowl of spaghetti hanging down. 

Yasin K's monster has a missing nose. It must be terribly messy when it gets a cold! How does it pick bogies I wonder ...

Physical characteristics include rotten fingernails and toenails, a missing nose and they are generally ugly. 

Mariam and Samera have written a poem about their monster:

My monster has a body like a snake
Eyes like mine but with fire
A nose like an elephant
A mouth like a dog’s
Legs like a cat’s
And instead of arms it has fins.
My monster is as friendly as my teacher
As clever as a scientist
As smelly as a baby’s nappy
And as frightening as a zombie!
The monster is called The Funny Monster!

Poems are a good way to describe monsters. I think we should include some in our book. What do you think?

If you've read some of my other posts, you will know that I like writers who show the reader how disgusting their monster is, instead of just telling.

An example of telling is: "My monster is disgusting."

An example of showing is: "People are sick when they see my monster."

Faatima has used a good example of showing:

 It stinks and is covered in insects! 

I love Yasin's monster noise:

He is blue and he makes the sound of a toilet flushing! 

Yasin also said:

He eats school buildings and teachers! 

Another class wrote about a monster that eats teachers. Perhaps we ought to use that idea in our books ...

Ahmad's monster thinks he is allergic to baths but he's not. I really like the idea of a monster who hates baths so much he mistakes his dislike for an allergy. This is a great example of 'show don't tell'.

Many thanks to Bridge School for their contributions.