Children's Books discussion

As a kid I lived in the library and I read everything in the children's section. Not everything stuck with me, but I do remember 2 series.

One is a about a boy who is friends with all the classic monster, like a werewolf, a mummy, Frankenstein's monster, a vampire, the lot. He goes to visit them every day.
I believe there was a bad guy who wanted to capture the monsters for a zoo or something.

I don't remember his adventures in detail, but I do remember it was a whole series and the main threat the bad guy employed was dumping you in a swimming pool of whale snot.
Pretty sure there was a girl in there at some point as well.

This has been bothering me for years, I can't remember the name of these books.
Please help me figure it out, so I know I'm not just imagining the whale snot bit...

Oh that sounds like a fun series! I assume it was short novels, not picture-books or easy readers, right?

And when was this? Children's book series generally don't stay in libraries for more than a decade or so....

Must've been somewhere between 2001 and 2004.
No pictures, all text.

Gotcha.
That's recent enough a librarian would probably remember.
I did a quick search on Listopia and only found Fright Time: https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/1....

I don't think that's it, I don't remember short stories or the intent to be scary or even creepy.
There were monsters, sure, but they were all friendly.

Yeah, I didn't think so.
Sorry, I'm really bad at this kind of detective work.
I hope someone else remembers!

That's too new for me but it sounds up nephew #1's alley. If you find it, let us know.

It's not Bailey School Kids is it? Those are by Debbie Dadey with titles like Frankenstein Doesn't Plant Petunias.

Vampires Don't Wear Polka Dots for a link. :)

No, the kid was a bit older and the monsters were quite literally the monsters living in the house, not the teachers of some school.

Have you asked at your local library?

I found it!

It's called 'Maik and his monsters' by an Austrian author called Thomas Brezina.
There's 7 books in the series.
It's been translated from German, so I don't know the original title.

It's totally about a gang of monsters living in a house on an abandoned theme park.

Glad you found the title!

Thomas Brezina
Griezels in huis is number 2, for example.

I'm having trouble finding anything in English, though this Austrian (?) does have a bunch of books listed (and looks young, too!). Maybe a franchise?
WorldCat lists only a few of his books once I filter for English, none in this series.
https://www.worldcat.org/search?q=tho...

I'm baffled.

I am unfamiliar with the series. I don't remember this series as being in any of the libraries that I worked in.

It probably never got translated into English, I read them in Dutch as a kid.
I'm happy to have found it again, maybe I'll track some copies down to read them again. See what that whale snot thing was all about.

Ah, see, if we'd known that it was likely they weren't in English, that would have been a big clue.

Yes, telling potential book hunters that the books were in the Dutch language would have been a huge must. In no place in the original post is it stated that the requestor is from the Netherlands or that the books were read in the Dutch language. I realize that people of many different nations and languages use GoodReads, but when someone posts a question in English, it is natural to assume that they are looking for something written in English, unless it is specifically stated otherwise.