To the children, the town was their whole world. To the adults, knowing better, Derry, Maine, was just their hometown: familiar, well-ordered, a good place to live. It was the children who saw--and felt--what made Derry so horribly different. In the storm drains, in the sewers, It lurked, taking on the shape of every nightmare, each person's deepest dread. Sometimes It reached up, seizing, tearing, killing ... The adults, knowing better, knew nothing....

Birthday monsters come to wreak havoc in extraordinarily rude ways. On board pages with a die-cut cover

"Monsters all over the world have different ways to scare, but they all have one thing in common: they all love zany underpants! And every Saturday night, you will find them in a secret cave, showing off their fancy pants as they dance the Monster Bop! But they have to make it home before the sun comes up -- after all, who would be scared of monsters in underpants that are striped and dotted?" -- Jacket.

Jason, Piper, and Leo, three students from a school for "bad kids," find themselves at Camp Half-Blood, where they learn that they are demigods and begin a quest to free Hera, who has been imprisoned by Mother Earth herself.

When two fearful children are terrified of each other, their respective monsters try to help.

A young monster says goodnight to all of the other monsters in his bedroom.

Monsters of different colors explain what makes them feel glad, sad, loving, worried, silly, and angry. Fold-out masks encourage readers to talk about their feelings.

When a young bank teller inadvertently breaks the rules of Mogwai care, his new pet, Gizmo, multiplies into a bevy of mischievous brothers, who soon morph into malevolent scaly creatures.