Once upon a time there were two story monsters. I'll tell you about them. But first, do you know what a cookie monster is? A cookie monster always wants more cookies no matter how many cookies it has had. Also it will rarely accept the same cookie twice. It always wants new cookies. Story monsters, on the other hand, never have enough stories and rarely do they want an old one.

The story monsters that I want to tell you about have names that begin with R and J. But I certainly won't tell you who they are. They may not even know they are story monsters.

Rachel, why are you putting on your evil eye? Jonathan, why are you smiling?

Each of these story monsters had a good sense of humor. They knew how to enjoy a story. They would add to it and comment or ask questions. They would laugh if it was funny or cringe if it was freightening. And usually they would listen very carefully except one one of them sometimes read a comic book.

When these story monsters were very little they got their Daddy used to telling them stories all the time. Before that he hardly ever made up or told stories. And if he couldn't tell them stories he wrote stories for them like this one.

Sometimes they liked the stories and sometimes they didn't. If they didn't, they would say: "Guy, that's silly." or "Not another story about a flying elephant." or "That's not a good story."

Often the stories would end with a line such as: "and they turned out the light and closed the door and that's alll there is, there isn't any more." Then the story monsters would go to sleep. Or at least they were supposed to. Ho! Ho! But they hardly ever wanted to go to sleep. They wanted "just one more story" or they wanted to read some.

Finally they would go to sleep just like in the story. So, nite nite, story monsters.

THE END