Emily Carroll's ghost tale/graphic novel hybrid offers a visual representation of the kind of ghost stories told around the campfire--the ones that leave you with the feeling that the threat lurks just beyond the light cast by the flames. Carroll uses a muted palette of predominantly black, white, red and blue to chilling effect.
Jealousy, envy and fear permeate these five stories, and the woods mark a rite of passage. Once you enter, you can never go back to the innocence you'd known before. The middle of three sisters narrates one tale, in which their father, off on a hunt, tells the girls that if he does not come home in three days, they should go to the neighbor's house. He does not return, and one by one her sisters disappear. Dimly lit vertical and horizontal panels heighten the tension until the narrator finally follows their father's advice. But just who is their neighbor--death itself?
Another story, illustrated a falsely upbeat palette of red, blue and gold, tells of a new bride left behind by her hunter husband in a house he acquired through the murder of his previous wife. The creepiest of the five, "The Nesting Place," stars Bell, who goes to live with her brother and his eerily cheerful wife, Rebecca. A parallel series of panels depicts Bell falling in the same cave where Rebecca did as a girl, and Bell discovers Rebecca's true nature.
The cover hints at the bony hands reaching from the edges of the woods to pull readers inside. Bone-rattling. --Jennifer M. Brown, children's editor, Shelf Awareness