A fun story with art that’ll knock readers dead.
A cemetery-obsessed kid finds himself in ghoulish company.
On his way to school with his friend Marshall, Grey splits off to take a shortcut through the cemetery. Grey trips, accidentally dropping his school project—a diorama of the cemetery—into an open gravesite. Before he can get it back, a clawlike hand drags the diorama into the shadows with a “HsssSSSsss.” Grey high-tails it out of there and goes to school empty-handed. That night, that very creature visits Grey in his room and disappears when spotted. Grey finds the diorama on his doorstep not only intact, but improved. Next comes a series of strange gifts. When accosted, the gift giver—a young ghoul named Lavinia—warns that the “cemetery’s not safe” for “surface-dwellers.” But when the other ghouls threaten people important to Grey, Grey must brave the Kingdom of the Dead. What—and where—have Grey and his new “ghoul-friend” gotten themselves into? More macabre than spine-tingling, this fast-paced blend of humor and horror is essentially an against-the-odds friendship story. Though the quality of Farris’ watercolor art alone distinguishes it from other full-color graphic novels, her skeletal, shadowy silhouettes are wonderfully (and unforgettably) nightmarish. Bunn’s ghoul lore offers a fresh alternate post–Salem witch trials narrative. Visual cues code Grey as biracial, with a mom of color and a White dad; Marshall presents White. A sequel will follow.
A fun story with art that’ll knock readers dead. (Graphic horror. 8-12)Pub Date: July 13, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-06-289610-0
Page Count: 200
Publisher: HarperAlley
Review Posted Online: May 4, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
The three way chats, in which they are joined by other animals, about web spinning, themselves, other humans—are as often...
A successful juvenile by the beloved New Yorker writer portrays a farm episode with an imaginative twist that makes a poignant, humorous story of a pig, a spider and a little girl.
Young Fern Arable pleads for the life of runt piglet Wilbur and gets her father to sell him to a neighbor, Mr. Zuckerman. Daily, Fern visits the Zuckermans to sit and muse with Wilbur and with the clever pen spider Charlotte, who befriends him when he is lonely and downcast. At the news of Wilbur's forthcoming slaughter, campaigning Charlotte, to the astonishment of people for miles around, spins words in her web. "Some Pig" comes first. Then "Terrific"—then "Radiant". The last word, when Wilbur is about to win a show prize and Charlotte is about to die from building her egg sac, is "Humble". And as the wonderful Charlotte does die, the sadness is tempered by the promise of more spiders next spring.
The three way chats, in which they are joined by other animals, about web spinning, themselves, other humans—are as often informative as amusing, and the whole tenor of appealing wit and pathos will make fine entertainment for reading aloud, too.Pub Date: Oct. 15, 1952
ISBN: 978-0-06-026385-0
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1952
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
Fast-paced and plot-driven.
In his latest, prolific author Gratz takes on Hitler’s Olympic Games.
When 13-year-old American gymnast Evie Harris arrives in Berlin to compete in the 1936 Olympic Games, she has one goal: stardom. If she can bring home a gold medal like her friend, the famous equestrian-turned-Hollywood-star Mary Brooks, she might be able to lift her family out of their Dust Bowl poverty. But someone slips a strange note under Evie’s door, and soon she’s dodging Heinz Fischer, the Hitler Youth member assigned to host her, and meeting strangers who want to make use of her gymnastic skills—to rob a bank. As the games progress, Evie begins to see the moral issues behind their sparkling facade—the antisemitism and racism inherent in Nazi ideology and the way Hitler is using the competition to support and promote these beliefs. And she also agrees to rob the bank. Gratz goes big on the Mission Impossible–style heist, which takes center stage over the actual competitions, other than Jesse Owens’ famous long jump. A lengthy and detailed author’s note provides valuable historical context, including places where Gratz adapted the facts for storytelling purposes (although there’s no mention of the fact that before 1952, Olympic equestrian sports were limited to male military officers). With an emphasis on the plot, many of the characters feel defined primarily by how they’re suffering under the Nazis, such as the fictional diver Ursula Diop, who was involuntarily sterilized for being biracial.
Fast-paced and plot-driven. (Historical fiction. 9-12)Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2025
ISBN: 9781338736106
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2025
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