A lovely colourful board book exploring a city and love the 'Where's Wally?' aspect of trying to find all the monsters on the page. Recommended for fun reading with added development aspects.

This book is a part of a series of travel books for children and what wonderful books they are!!! This series is a really cool concept making it fun for kids to learn about places to visit and interesting sights to see in a city while looking for monsters in each page of the book! Each page of the book mentions an attraction with an interesting fact or two about it; and your job (well, actually your child’s!) is to find the many monsters lurking on that page (but I competed with mine to find them; and I also need to say, none of my kids are little anymore at fourteen and eleven!!). The monsters are definitely hiding well so it takes some time to find all of them; the number of monsters on each page is helpfully pointed out by the host monster (pictured on the cover as well) at the bottom of the page.
The illustrations are bright, colorful, and fun while also being depicting the landmarks and attractions pretty accurately so that children can use that to recognize the real deal when visiting the city. And I am sure that kids will enjoy pointing out the attractions they have already visited on books they are reading.
And the message that I think we can all take from these books – When (and where and how) cute little comic book monsters have fun exploring the city, we can have fun too – so let us get out and explore!!! I cannot wait to explore – the cities; and also more of these books.
I just wish that these books could have had a few more pages listing a few more attractions, to make them lots more fun.
A couple of comments on this book
San Francisco – well, this one is easily my favorite given we live in the San Francisco Bay Area (in San Jose). Each attraction is a loved one; and many of them visited often; but we still have at least one spot mentioned in this book that we need to visit (and thanks to watching Full House, that attraction has moved up our list of pending attractions to visit; yes, the Painted Ladies)
Thank you to NetGalley for the digital review copy of this book

Fun and entertaining to read with kids. Liked the facts and the monsters. Good illistrations. Would recommend this book.

I know I am going to write exact same review which I have written for Chicago version but feeling is same so is the review.

My kid loves tiny cute monsters and minions. This book was his favorite fun activity. He went through pages and find out monster hidden in various places. This series is good to develop visual observation in kids.

Another cute installment in the city monsters series, this time set in San Francisco (which I am the least familiar with, so it was quite fun for me too to learn about the most famous sights!) However, I found that the monsters in this installment were not as good at hiding, were not as well blended with the background and it did not take much searching at all to find them. NYC, especially, was much harder! But, any child I'm sure would have fun with this, especially if they read the entire series.

'San Francisco Monsters: A Search-And-Find Book' by Carine LaForest with art by Stephanie MacKay is a picture book introdution to a city, with the additional task of looking for hidden monsters.

The familiar sites of San Francisco are presented: The Golden Gate Bridge, Hyde and Lombardi streets, Fisherman's Wharf and others. Hidden among the drawings are little monsters to find. Some are pretty obvious, and some are hidden a bit more. Each page tells you how many monsters are hiding.

It's a cute book for a young traveler to a new city, or perhaps for a child who lives in the city. At only 22 pages, it seems a bit skimpy.

I received a review copy of this ebook from City Monsters, Chouette Publishing, and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Thank you for allowing me to review this ebook.

What an informative book, it introduces sightseeing of San Francisco, a place I've never visited. If I were to go I'd get this for my child so that we could plan an itinerary. Looking for monsters was fun too. This is a superb book if you are planning a trip. There are other locations in the series too. Lovely pictures with well hidden monsters. It would make a great game to find monsters in between visiting each site of interest. I think it really draws children in to the whole sight seeing experience. My child would then take the book to school to show where she had gone. An excellent idea to stir the Imagination of the young and old

A delightfully fun monster book for kids of all ages.

Awesome book series. Not only do you get to learn about the San Francisco, this is also a find it book. My Grand daughter fell in love with this book right off the bat. She loves find it books. This one you find the Monsters hiding all over the page. It tells you how many to look for, so you also get a lesson in counting. Each page tells you about one of the sites in San Francisco as well. The pictures are very busy and brightly colored, great for the little ones. I will be buying this series of books for my Grand Daughter.

Back in January I had the pleasure of reviewing ‘New York City Monsters’. At the time I hadn’t realised that the book was going to be part of a collection.

I awarded ‘New York City Monsters’ five stars, so when the San Francisco Monsters became available to read and review I jumped at the chance. The difference between these two books, to me, is that I have been to New York so the places in the book were familiar. With this book, apart from a few that I’d heard of, such as the Golden Gate Bridge, the places were all unfamiliar to me, so that meant not only could I see them drawn in the book, but I started Googling them too.

Each page visits a different building, landmark, or famous street, such as Union Square, Dewey Monument, Fisherman’s Wharf, etc. On each page there are also hidden monsters In the bottom right hand corner another monster tells you how many are hidden on that page.

My youngest son and I enjoy trying to find them. Some are easier to find than others, and on one page I think we spent about ten minutes trying to locate the last one (of course my son found it first 🙂 ). He has now asked can we read the other books, which goes to show how interesting the stories are.

The book is colourful, informative, and with the added bonus of hidden monsters throughout it is great fun too. Another five stars. Now to read and review the others!

A 5 year old and a 6 year old had a great time reading this book. The fun part is that you can ease the kids into reading based on their level. You can ask them to find the monsters. some are right in the view and some are tough t find, so it is tough. It improves remembering, counting.
The 6 year old had fun reading the book too. In such a fun activity, you forget that they are learning about a place too. for future visits, you can get the kids to draw their own search-and-find sites.

Very Engaging.

San Francisco Monsters: A Search-and-Find Book is written by Carine Laforest and illustrated by Stephanie Mackay. This book is part of the City Monsters series, which "takes you on a sightseeing adventure. Find the hidden little monsters as you discover big-city landmarks."

As an interactive story, children will learn about the city of San Francisco, as they search and find adorable monsters throughout the colorful illustrations of city landmarks, such as the Golden Gate Bridge, Fisherman's Wharf, Alcatraz, and Alamo Square.

According to the back cover, "The City by The Bay is such a great place to live that even little monsters have taken up residence there.... Have fun spotting them all as you explore some of San Francisco's most iconic landmarks and sights!"

This easy-to-read book is a charming children's travel book, which is geared towards younger readers, particularly ages three to eight.


Note: I received this book from NetGalley, which is a program designed for bloggers to write book reviews in exchange for books, yet the opinions expressed in this review are my own.

As always, each page contains not-always-scary monsters to find. That’s the entire game, and really all you need. Each setting is brightly colored yet realistic, as the Golden Gate Bridge, Painted Ladies, and brickwork of Ghirardelli Square attest to.
Maybe it’s the locale, but I enjoyed this one a little more than the previous editions in Chicago or Noo Yawk.

Hi guuys if you have a young child in your life they will love the "San Francsio Monsters " I just read it and its so cute as you read to the child about the city the book takes in they can find little hidden monsters in the pictures its such a cute Idea I gave it 5 Stars

I loved this book and found it fun, with lovely, bright and clear images. It has some good basic details on the buildings and sites in San Francisco and can see it being warmly enjoyed by any children going to this lovely city for a holiday or mini break. This is the second search and find book and I found this one a lot easier to find the Monsters (which is a good thing!)

I'd love to read more of these! Searching for monsters among San Francisco's landmarks was fun and education. Held the attention of all three of my kids (4, 6, & 8) which is a major accomplishment!

An extremely fun, educational read for young children.
Finding the little monsters was added fun and made the book even better.

My grandson, who is five, enjoyed this book together. It's a cross between Where's Wally and Monsters Inc. What's not to like? Not only does it point out places of interest for the grown up, it makes it interesting for the younger reader who has to find the monsters hidden in each beautifully drawn picture. A little short, but so is my grandson's attention span.

So enjoyable. Children who like nonfiction will enjoy learning and looking for monsters!

A fantastic book for young children who love finding hidden things in the pictures, in this case MONSTERS! An enjoyable book to read and also informative about lots of different sights to see in San Francisco, I'm actually planning to visit SF this year and even noted down a few places to visit! Perfect book for encouraging children to read more!