My Favorite Thing Is Monsters

The story begins with a dream. Karen Reyes (10 years old), the protagonist, is having a recurring dream of becoming a werewolf. She transforms into a hairy creature with long legs, big teeth, and begins howling. People around the city hear her and begin calling for her to be killed. The werewolf version of Karen is her alter ego. She also has a love of monsters which inspires her to see herself in this way. In her dream, Karen is about to be shot, and in this moment, she ponders the nature of humanity: “humans are afraid of death, and it makes them frantic” (15). The people who call for her murder are grim and angry looking, with caricaturized faces that are prominent on the pages. Karen describes people as the “M.O.B. …. Mean, Ordinary, and Boring” (17). She feels this way because people only believe things that they can tangibly sense, and Karen is an avid believer that monsters exist, just out of plain sight. Then, she awakes to the sound of her mother’s voice. She checks her nightie for blood and finds none, grabs her stuffed monster Blemmy, and begins copying art from a copy of Ghastly, a horror magazine that her brother Deeze supplies her with.