His home is not too far.
Will he continue in his fine tin can or can he fight becoming monster fare?
What is it about?
Monstreffic, written by Peter Füssy and illustrated by Gabriela Araújo, opens with a simple question dressed up as a monster story: who actually benefits when a whole city tries to drive home at once? The answer the book gives is a creature. Monstreffic Infernalis is a grumpy, slow, wide giant that lives in cities and stretches for miles. It eats cars, big or small, electric or gas, cheap or fancy, and the slower the traffic crawls, the more it has to feed on. The joke carries the argument: the jam is not bad luck or bad weather. The cars make it, and the monster grows fat on it.
Paul is stuck in that jam on a Friday evening, trying to get home. The book files him under a species of its own, Homo carcentricus. While he waits, he spots an old friend, Ana, who is lost and needs to reach the theater in half an hour. He tells her to take the subway instead of fighting the traffic. Then, with the beast practically breathing on him, he does something he hasn’t done in a long time: he leaves the car and walks. The walk home is the real story. Paul notices a restaurant he had never seen, though it may have been there all along, and its smell sends him back to his grandmother’s kitchen. He buys fruit and a slice of carrot cake at the market. A neighbor’s dog jumps up to greet him. The same rush hour that felt like a trap an hour earlier stops feeling like one. He gets home lighter and sleeps well, and then, the next morning, he is back in the car and back in traffic. Füssy doesn’t pretend one good walk fixes anything, and the book is better for it.
Füssy is a journalist, photographer, migrant, mobility activist, and father. He spent four years in Amsterdam before moving to Portugal, and he also wrote If This Street Were Mine, reviewed here earlier, along with work in the same vein such as The Car That Wanted to Be a Bike. Füssy told us the book was inspired by Movement, case for reclaiming our streets, which we’ve reviewed here too. Monstreffic belongs to that same project: giving children a different picture of the city than the one most of them are born into.
What approach does it take?
The book makes its point with a joke rather than a lesson. Turning congestion into a hungry animal lets young readers see traffic as something people produce, not something that simply happens to them, and the mock-Latin labels are funny enough to invite questions. Gabriela Araújo’s illustrations, loose and bright and drawn as if by a child in crayon and marker, match that tone and do a lot of the talking. What I like most is that the book sells the alternative instead of just scolding the problem. Walking, the subway, slowing down, running into people you know: these come across as pleasures, not sacrifices. And the ending refuses an easy moral. Paul slips back into his old habit the next day, which quietly admits that changing this isn’t up to one driver; it is about how the whole city is arranged. That makes it a good starting point for a conversation. Movi also offers discussion ideas on its site.
Who might be interested in this book?
Parents and teachers who want to talk with kids about cities, traffic, pollution, and the alternatives to driving will find plenty here. So will planners, mobility advocates, and anyone interested in cities built around people rather than cars. It reads aloud well for younger children and prompts good questions from older ones. Monstreffic is published by Movi, and the first global English edition came out in August 2025.
Further details
- Academic disciplines: Urban planning, sustainable mobility, and children studies.
- Geographical scope: –
- Relation to cycling: The book is about walking and public transport more than bikes, but its argument, taking streets back from cars and picturing a city built for people, is the same one cycling advocates make. It pairs well with the wider case for active mobility.
