Eco Monsters: Children draw monsters as a way to explore hopes, fears, and dreams about our fragile planet.



The Story of Eco Monsters



Godzilla is the first Eco Monster we know of. The original Japanese Godzilla movie (1954) is an allegory for the devastation wrought on Japan by the atomic bomb, and serves as a cautionary tale about what can happen when human beings alter the environment. Godzilla is driven out of his home in the Pacific Ocean when people begin underwater hydrogen-bomb testing. Awakened from the depths of the ocean as a terrifying radioactive monster, Godzilla stomps on villages, destroys ships, and makes his way towards Tokyo until a scientist develops an even more destructive bomb, capable of sucking all oxygen from the sea.

As a parent of two monster-loving boys, and having grown up in Japan watching Godzilla movies myself, I became interested in the art work my children were producing. Elliot (11) and Nico (8) were drawing monsters who, like Godzilla, were born of ecological disasters. Elliot’s Ice-Cyclops had left his home in Antarctica because his glaciers were melting and was rampaging through U.S. cities, looking for a new glacial habitat. Octo-Oil Squid was a sea-monster who fed on oil spills in the ocean because there were no fish left to eat. These creatures had powerful messages, and I decided to start collecting ”Eco Monster” art.

In 2011, we made a video about Eco Monsters for Kickstarter.com. Our goal was to inspire others to create Eco Monster art. Within a few months of submitting our video, we received over three hundred monsters! We learned that schools had begun using the Eco Monster theme as a teaching tool. Drawing monsters proved to be a fun way to explore a variety of concerns about the future of our planet. Teachers said, that when monsters were envisioned, students wrote lengthy stories with detailed illustrations, came up with great questions about ecological challenges, and brainstormed solutions about what humans could do differently to protect Earth.

In May of 2011, we successfully raised funds to set up an art exhibit for all the Eco Monster drawings we received, print posters, and publish a book. We hope this book will inspire teachers, students, and artists around the world to explore the difficult issues we face using pencils, recycled materials, and wild, boundless, monstrous imagination.