The last thing I’d ever want is a child waking in the dead of night yelling, “That story hour lady gave me nightmares!” So come Halloween season, I’m on the lookout for books to read that are festively spooky, without being truly frightening.
Alison Paul’s “The Crow — A Not So Scary Story,” fits the bill.
It’s a fun read-aloud, appropriately building tension as a young child spies someone mysterious creeping outside his window and imagines it to be all manner of rogue or villain.
“One morning I woke up sleepy,/came downstairs to something creepy. Outside the window sat something freaky/my eyes had never known.”
Ms. Paul’s text is a riff on Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Raven,” and she deftly echoes Poe’s cadence, yet offers more whimsy as the story unfolds from the little boy’s perspective. Her cut-paper collage illustrations — presented in a rich palette of purples, golds, deep blues, browns and black — pair beautifully with the evocative atmospheric language of the poem.
“So am I watching him,/or is he watching me? I feel I’m not alone. As I pull the curtain back,/to make a bigger crack,/what is it I see?”
While crawling behind furniture and peeping through keyholes, the boy imagines the intruder to be a wizard, a burglar, a pirate and a king — only to realize in the end that it’s only a harmless little crow.
“That’s it—/I’m not hiding any more ... I’m opening the door ... I’m telling him he has to go!/Oh, it’s just a crow.”
Maybe because she was born (as the jacket flap notes) on Halloween, Ms. Paul was able to create this well-written, gorgeously illustrated, “not so scary story” for young readers. Or maybe it’s just because she’s enormously talented. Either way, “The Crow” is a must-read for this leaf-crackling, witch-cackling time of year.
The author, as it happens, is a graduate of Rhode Island School of Design, and a resident of Providence. She will be signing copies of “The Crow” from 2 to 4 p.m. at Barrington Books (184 County Road in Barrington) on — you guessed it — Oct. 31.
Anika Denise is a children’s book author, mother of two little girls, and the host of Thursday morning story hour at Barrington Books. Bookmarks is a weekly feature on various children’s books, themes, authors and illustrators. For questions or suggestions, contact aadenise@verizon.net.
