A healthy spoonful of creepiness softened by the charming weakness of the characters.
A self-important witch who haunts a small village gets her comeuppance—and her revenge, too.
Naailde is a scrofulous, mischievous character of international repute in the world of witches—she can transform into 1,897 different hideous monsters—who lives in a mansion infested with all manner of infernal creatures, “in a dark and horrifying forest.” An elegant gentleman comes knocking at her door one eve and asks to spend the night—a red flag Naailde misses in her eagerness to scare his pants off. All to no avail; the dandy will have none of her most wily and gruesome guises. He even criticizes her technique. What’s more, he—now revealed as “a” devil—sends her packing...until she returns as a she-devil, though she’ll always be Naailde underneath. This app is long enough to provide a wealth of textual and visual narration, giving it unusual depth. The text is narrated by a voice that verges on the eerie, and the lightly animated, sketchlike artwork is an artful mare’s nest of black linework, though red and purple color starts to leak in with the arrival of the guest. The story comes to an ambiguous close, leaving readers to wonder if the red and purple ribbons of smoke coming from the chimney are a sign of togetherness or immolation.
A healthy spoonful of creepiness softened by the charming weakness of the characters. (Requires iOS 6 and above.) (iPad storybook app. 4-8)Pub Date: Oct. 21, 2014
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Ivan Annibali
Review Posted Online: Nov. 18, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
Continuing to find inspiration in the work of Virginia Lee Burton, Munro Leaf and other illustrators of the past, Long (The Little Engine That Could, 2005) offers an aw-shucks friendship tale that features a small but hardworking tractor (“putt puff puttedy chuff”) with a Little Toot–style face and a big-eared young descendant of Ferdinand the bull who gets stuck in deep, gooey mud. After the big new yellow tractor, crowds of overalls-clad locals and a red fire engine all fail to pull her out, the little tractor (who had been left behind the barn to rust after the arrival of the new tractor) comes putt-puff-puttedy-chuff-ing down the hill to entice his terrified bovine buddy successfully back to dry ground. Short on internal logic but long on creamy scenes of calf and tractor either gamboling energetically with a gaggle of McCloskey-like geese through neutral-toned fields or resting peacefully in the shade of a gnarled tree (apple, not cork), the episode will certainly draw nostalgic adults. Considering the author’s track record and influences, it may find a welcome from younger audiences too. (Picture book. 5-8)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-399-25248-8
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Philomel
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2009
SEEN & HEARD
A top-grade creepy/funny addition to the spooky-picture-book canon.
Is a cute kitty built in a castle’s laboratory responsible for the bad things that start happening?
“Here is a tale to chill the blood and thrill the soul—a tale of spooky paws and eerie claws.” The disembodied talking skull who narrates this story is alluding to Frankenkitty, who was engineered out of multiple cats, with visible stitches to show for it. As the house ghouls look on, Frankenkitty’s inventor laments, “I’ve created a monster!” Sure enough, bad things start happening: The mummy begins to unravel. Kitchen mice terrorize the cook. Certainly, Frankenkitty must be to blame. But after the butler, who resembles Frankenstein’s Monster, tosses Frankenkitty outside into the snow, where he looks forlorn and adorable, the skull has second thoughts: “Wait! Did we get it wrong?” It’s up to readers to make the call. Powell-Tuck goes all in with her spoof of old-time horror tropes, although kids needn’t know who Boris Karloff is to be tickled. For the book’s every scare (a severed foot and hand, their bones visible), there’s a wink (in a bit of metafictive fun, the skull urges readers to opt for a story about “unicorns, beasts, or bears”). Grey, a glutton for detail, leans on menacing reds and sickly greens to capture the frights, which include, in a line for the spooky-story ages, “walls as gray as old underpants.” Human characters vary in skin tone.
A top-grade creepy/funny addition to the spooky-picture-book canon. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: July 7, 2026
ISBN: 9781664300972
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Tiger Tales
Review Posted Online: March 23, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2026
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