Monsters stir at night after kids hit the sack
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Ghouls and goblins dance and make merry in Sid Sharp’s Midnight Manor: A Backwards Bedtime Book (Annick Press, 36 pages, hardcover, $25). Their spectral lives are no different than the children ages 3-6 for whom this book is intended, except perhaps for the options on the menu for their nightly breakfast — mushroom porridge with melted marshmallows, or tadpole pie and warm worms among them.
Sharp’s deadpan illustrations of banshees, phantoms, trolls and other residents inject wry humour to this description of an extraordinary, ordinary day.
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Are our fates predetermined, or is life a series of coincidences? That’s the philosophical question posed in The Wise Pickle (Tundra, 40 pages, hardcover, $25) by Sarah Howden, when a pickle tossed from a hot dog ends up on a sidewalk.
Locals — a worm, a rat, a bird and a chipmunk — gather and ponder the world’s largest questions as they watch the pickle shrivel in the sun.
Children ages 3-7 will laugh as they chew over this Godot-like pickle-dicament. Sabina Hahn creates a sympathetic rendering of the brined cucumber at every stage of its precarious existence.
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Rebecca Green has written two charming picture book/graphic novel combinations, Henri & Miko: Autumn in Bosk Olivette and Henri & Miko: Winter in Bosk Olivette (Tundra, 40 pages, hardcover, $25 each).
Henri, a mouse, and Niko, a bee, celebrate life in their woodland community. In autumn they build a fort from ruby-coloured leaves and invite everyone to watch a scary movie. In the winter, they throw snowballs with friends. They’re delightfully imperfect characters who gently poke fun at each other.
Green includes recipes and activities for children aged 4-8, who are themselves likely impatient for the first snowy day when they can climb into their boots and snowsuits and throw snowballs.
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Adi Rule’s Ghost Chickens — Omelet from the Other Side (Tundra, 208 pages, softcover, $13) finds aspiring journalist Florence flummoxed when her quirky parents move from a downtown urban apartment to a rural fixer-upper. Her goal is to get back where she belongs, but when she stumbles on a rundown coop full of ghost chickens, her investigative senses kick in. What’s the story?
Lots of eggs and jokes cracked in this romp into country living for 8-12 year olds, humorously illustrated by Joëlle Dreidemy.
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Haunted Canada Graphic Novel, Volume 3: Four Chilling Tales by Joel A. Sutherland (Scholastic, 144 pages, softcover, $19) arrives just in time for spooky season, another collection of this ever-popular series for 9-12 year olds.
In this volume, historic regional ghost stories are revisited, this time in a graphic novel format, with illustrations by three artists. Read it and be chilled.
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It’s 1914, and Bernice is having a wonderful time at the lighthouse her father tends each summer on Georgian Bay in Bernice and the Wild Waters (Second Story Press, 195 pages, softcover, $14), a novel for 9-12 year-olds by Jessica Outram.
But when her cousins go missing, her parents warn her to hide her Métis identity. Bernice needs to navigate the choppy waters of life as well as Georgian Bay. Indian agents are stealing children from their families, and she is forced to confront the danger she’s desperate to avoid.
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Teens aged 14-18 will get their frights from Sam Wilket’s A Good Daughter’s Ghost (Annick Press, 248 pages, softcover, $20).
Sixteen-year-old Rachel is embarrassed that her mother is a spiritual medium who helps people communicate with dead relatives. But when she begins babysitting for a family that has lost a daughter, she discovers their dark family secrets.
Unnerving, hair-raising incidents result in a gripping climax, where Rachel’s own life, as well as those she loves, are jeopardized.
Harriet Zaidman is an award-winning writer for young people. Her historical novels recall significant events in Canadian history as they affected young people.
