Monster Nanny by Tuutikki Tolonen

School has just let out for the school , when Mother wins a two week free trip to Lapland. The contest will send a nanny to take care of her three children. Mother is thrilled to be going to Lapland, but worries because the children’s father is still off on business in America. The nanny turns out to be a half-human, aka monster, aka troll. “Strange things were happening. Mom, who never went anywhere, was going away. Dad, who was never at home, was coming back. The children, who had never been left alone, were about to spend the night on their own. And in the hall closet slept a trained monster, though everybody had always been told that monsters didn’t exist.” (20)

The monster takes good care of the children. The children learn more about monster by checking out a very old book from the public library. From the book, which they read in bits and pieces, they learn to let the monster go into the woods at night to eat, it is a vegetarian. Between the book and the youngest child’s ‘talking bathrobe’ ( the siblings think it is an imaginary friend, but it isn’t) they decided they should go camping outside by their back fence next to the woods. Soon the children learn their mother was not the only one who won the contest. Fourteen other children’s parents are now on vacation in Lapland, too. Each child has its own monster nanny. Little by little, it is discovered the monsters are connected to each other and the monsters can not go back home to their own world until a missing monster in this world has been found.

Dad returns home by the first morning of the camp out. He seems fine with the monster situation (this is Finland) and at one point states, ” so what we have here is a monsters’ liberation camp”. (249) Dad is enjoying his role as camp director. He helps ward off the three strange ladies, perhaps witches, when they show up looking for the monsters. As the monster puzzle’s pieces continue to fit into place the missing monster is found, allowing them all to go back home to their own world, the last monster through the hole removing the key to the doorway.