Symbolism, Imagery, Allegory
Setting
What up, Ratbridge? This funky little town has plenty of bizarre stuff going on, and frankly, we're surprised it's not a more popular tourist destination. We'll take you on a little tour to get you...
Narrator Point of View
In Here Be Monsters! we see everything from the third person perspective, meaning pronouns like he, she, and it, and no I or you unless we're looking at dialogue. Further, it's a limited omniscient...
Genre
Don't be fooled by the book's length; Here Be Monsters! is more young-adult than adult-adult. There are also elements of sci-fi, but we'll get to those in a minute.As far as YA lit goes, the main c...
Writing Style
Remember how we said this is a book for/about kids over in the "Genre" section? Well, the simple writing style also helps convince us of this fact. By simple we don't mean dumbed-down, just easy to...
What's Up With the Title?
Whoa, dude… Have you realized yet that Here Be Monsters! is both the title of the book and the title of the fifth chapter? This is actually, in our Shmoopy little minds, pretty significant.Hang w...
What's Up With the Ending?
In the last few pages of the book, we see everyone who was shrunk restored to normal size, Marjorie's resizing machine smashed, Marjorie recruiting Arthur to be her new scientific assistant, the Ra...
Tough-o-Meter
Arthur is just a kid, and since we spend a lot of time peeking over his shoulder and accompanying him on his adventures, we get a kid's perspective on things. This means that while there's exciteme...