Catastrophically undermines its own message.
Artwork has paranormal staying power.
Raven, a peach-skinned girl with curly red hair, sees masterpieces in an art museum and sets out to create some herself. It’s harder than she thinks, and although she works diligently, she finds the results “ugly.” She gathers up the so-called “doodles” and stuffs them under the bed. But just like the cat in the old folk song, the papers come back. Not a wardrobe nor the attic nor even the recycling center can hold them; they return onto her mirror, into her bed, and even—eek!—as part of “a brand-new box of drawing pads made from 100 percent recycled paper.” Three visual tones—Raven’s art, styled like a child’s black-and-white pencil drawings; Raven’s huge, round, uber-glossy cartoon eyes; and ominously dark backgrounds that turn dystopically yellow at the recycling center—complement but also jar against one another, parallel to the way the drawings’ reappearances unsettle Raven. When Raven finally takes her “hideous. Miserable-looking. Mess-ups” and works on them again until they’re “perfected” into her “very own gallery of masterpieces,” the delicious spookiness vanishes into a boring moral. Moreover, the text’s consistent and incorrect use of the term “doodle” is not only inaccurate—doodles are casual or absentminded, whereas Raven tries hard, even at the beginning—it belittles Raven’s deliberate artwork. Even more importantly, it dismisses young readers’ deliberate artwork too.
Catastrophically undermines its own message. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: July 7, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-316-45626-5
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Jimmy Patterson/Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: March 24, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2020
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Scales new heights of picture-book meta.
Comedian Holmes’ first kids’ book involves questionable hocus-pocus.
An unseen adult narrator announces to an unseen child that this book is “a collection of magic words that will make me, your grown-up, do whatever you say. The first step is to—” A black tail interrupts that thought. A turn of the page reveals an unfriendly-looking black dragon named Jesse. Anticipating trouble, the narrator informs Jesse, “This child is a wizard. So there’s no need to breathe fire all over them and burn their little buns to a crisp.” Jesse isn’t having it: “They don’t look like a wizard! They’re too small to have powers!” The narrator tells the child, “Let’s cast a quick spell to prove to Jesse that you’re a wizard.” The spell: “A twist of lemon, a puff of sage, / Make my grown-up TURN THE PAGE! / NAR-DOOF-GA!” Sure enough, the page turns! Jesse’s rebuttal: “Your grown-up was already turning the pages! That wasn’t a spell!” On it entertainingly goes: specious spells, nonsense syllables, and Jesse’s tut-tutting responses. If Holmes’ ambition is to make readers laugh at how ridiculous they sound following the book’s prompts, then he will succeed valiantly. The text and dragon (who is constructed, disarmingly, out of black masking tape) sit on what look like the pages of a yellowed manuscript, as befits the ancient spell book that this is(n’t).
Scales new heights of picture-book meta. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2026
ISBN: 9798217119035
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: May 18, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2026
PERSPECTIVES
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