Who Knows the Way to Mr. Grimly's Classroom? is a deliciously dark picture book about an overachieving student who roams the halls of a school populated with majestically creepy settings and oddly named personnel on a quest to return a borrowed book.
When Grace's teacher asks the titular question, Grace's hand shoots up and she blurts out, "Me, Miss. I know the way, Miss!" Miss Flytrap hands the eager girl a book and asks her to take it to Mr. Grimly. But this is Grace's first week at "her strange new school," and she does not actually know where to find his classroom. "I'll just have to ask someone along the way," she decides as the corridors become "darker and darker and more and more cobwebby." Pale librarian Miss Endpaper steps out of the shadows to point Grace onward, but the girl soon realizes she's lost again. The tall, thin head teacher, Mrs. Nightshade, advises Grace, but the directions prove unhelpful. Grace is subsequently aided by a talking bat, a sign "with a long pointing finger," and school cook Mrs. Macaroon before finding her way ("At last!") to Mr. Grimly--who says the book actually belongs to Miss Scuttling and asks for a volunteer to deliver it....
The magnificently gloomy, dreadfully imaginative narrative by Chris Priestley (Still Water) revels in all things uncanny and mysterious. His text is deliberate, allowing Grace's quest to unfold in a way that feels puzzling rather than threatening. Illustrator Mariachiara Di Giorgio (The Midnight Fair) uses light and shadow to produce stunningly dramatic art. Her interiors immaculately conjure Priestley's eerie, fantastical tone. --Lynn Becker, reviewer, blogger, and children's book author