The 2025 Louisiana Book Festival will be held on Saturday, November 1.
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Monica Arnaldo

Home Featured Authors & Panelists Featured Participant Lineup Monica Arnaldo

Monica Arnaldo was born in Ontario, Canada, where the trash cans are often filled with raccoons and half-eaten cheeseburgers (but seldom any glowing seeds). When she wasn’t drawing or reading, she spent much of her childhood pondering some of life’s great questions, such as “Can I pet that wild animal?” and “Why not?” She has since written and illustrated several picture books and moved to Quebec, where the raccoons speak French.

 

  

Schedule

Noon to 12:45 pm

State Library Seminar Center

The Louisiana Young Readers’ Choice Award Ceremony Honoring Are You a Cheeseburger? by Monica Arnaldo

(all ages)

 

1:00 pm to 1:45 pm

Cavalier House Books Tent

Book Signing

 

2:15 pm to 2:45 pm

Children’s Author Tent 1

The Museum of Very Bad Smells

(ages 4 to 9)

 

3:00 pm to 3:45 pm

Cavalier House Books Tent

Book Signing

Are You a Cheeseburger?

A Kids' Indie Next List pick! Laugh-out-loud humor and a tender friendship blossom in author-illustrator Monica Arnaldo’s charming picture book about a lonely raccoon and a glowing seed, and the world’s most important question: Can this seed grow cheeseburgers? 

Grub is a lonely racoon. Rumbling in the trash. Looking for food.

Seed is, well, a seed! Patiently waiting in the trash. Hoping someone will plant it. 

When the two finally meet, they realize they might be able to help each other! Grub has just one big question first: What will Seed grow? Could Seed grow Grub’s favorite food, mouthwatering cheeseburgers? Seed isn’t sure what a cheeseburger is exactly, but . . . maybe!

And so begins a hilarious friendship following two unlikely strangers learning more about the other and discovering the pressure that comes with fulfilling expectations. Author-illustrator Monica Arnaldo will leave readers giggling and clamoring for more in this charming story that celebrates the unexpected—and how the most special friendships bloom only when we are unapologetically ourselves.

Book Trailer

The Museum of Very Bad Smells: A Dare to Scratch 'n' Sniff Mystery

Calling upon only the BRAVEST detectives with the STRONGEST noses — do you dare to scratch 'n' sniff and help solve this foul mystery?!

There’s been a robbery at the Museum of Very Bad Smells! Somebody stole the world-famous rotten egg . . . and everybody is a suspect. It’s up to YOU to help sniff out the culprit and bring the prized exhibit back before the museum’s grand opening. 

From award-winning creator Monica Arnaldo comes a hilarious and interactive mystery about a robbery at the Museum of Very Bad Smells, with five stinky scratch elements in this hilarious picture book that encourages kids to scratch, smell, and—of course—pass it along to a friend.