One of the things I do in my job is interview authors and illustrators about their work. One of the authors I spoke to recently was Kyle Sullivan and we were talking about his middle grade book Hobgoblin and the Seven Stinkers of Rancidia (a stinky retelling of “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs”). One of the things that he mentioned that amused me was the Hobgoblin, the hero of the story, was actually from an alphabet book he and his brother had made previously. It’s not often you take a character from an alphabet book and spin a whole novel for them! Hobgoblin is clearly pretty special!

So I went and found the page he first appeared on in Monster ABC by Kyle and Derek Sullivan. The book is full of entertaining monsters and commentary about them, but as tempting as it was to feature someone else (maybe “L is for Loch Ness Monster, who’s sure he exists”), I decided to stick with Hobgoblin, the stinky hero who managed to transcend his place in the alphabet to save all of Rancidia!

H
is for Hobgoblin
who smells like a fart.

Farts don’t all smell the same. Does he smell like a dog fart? A “too many hot dogs at the ballgame” fart? A baby poop fart? Regardless, I’m probably going to try not to stand too close to Hobgoblin!