GHOST IN A FOUR-ROOM APARTMENT
by Ellen Raskin
A dramatic confrontation in speechless pictures and two voices; one a poltergeist who wants to play and eat mustard pickles, the other a rhyming rundown—as per The House That Jack Built—of the family and relatives who fill the four-room apartment. The ghostly voice knocks, taps, rings and speaks its mind on one (black) page, the people are presented on the facing (white) page: "Here is Harry, strong and able,/ Father of Doris, dressed in plaid,/ Father of Horace, good and bad,/ Who lives in a four-room apartment." And overleaf is a double-page spread in color of the apartment and its inhabitants rent asunder by the poltergeist (who at one point decides, because he likes Grandmother Sarah who wears hats, that everyone should have something on his head). Ellen Raskin's most creative construct—no one will give up this ghost.