The narrator is an unnamed young girl who loves where she lives.
All the neighbours are her friends, and she plays a meaningful part in each of their surrounding lives, and they in hers.
But their neighbourhood’s almost perfect life, is being shattered by a monster.
An unknown bin monster who comes on bin collection night, tips out and scatters all the bins' contents, creating havoc and a continuing mystery.
Who can this monster be?
How can it be stopped?
Time after time, the adults try different ways to foil the monster’s destructive plans by using innovative ideas to hold the bin lids in place.
All to no avail.
The girl decides to stay awake one night to try and see the culprit.
All that she sees are dark shadows of unknown shapes and hear echoes of noises without names.
The mystery thickens. Each bin day the residents are confronted with the same smelly mess and more questions without answers.
The girl has an idea. She is determined to catch that noisy, mess-making monster!
Can she succeed?
What she discovers is the greatest surprise of all.
This funny book cleverly conveys a frequent problem experienced by almost everyone at some time or another; the attack on rubbish bins by some unknown source in the dead of night.
It also shines a light on the fact that all living things must find a way to survive and are created with the intelligence to do so.
This interesting theme can generate great discussions with children about the many ways humans can come to terms with nature’s methods of survival, and perhaps an organic way of recycling left-over food waste.
Title: The Bin Monster
Author/Illustrator: Annabelle Hale
Publisher: Affirm Press, $ 22.99
Publication Date: 29 July 2025
Format: Hardcover
ISBN: 9781923046436
For ages: 3 – 7
Type: Picture Book
