cover image Halloween Tales

Halloween Tales

Olivier Boiscummon and Denis-Pierre Filippi, trans. from the French by Montana Kane, Marelle Piche, and Justin Kelly. Humanoids, $24.95 (160p) ISBN 978-1-59465-654-5

In a collection originally published in France, Boiscommun and Filippi share three tales of monstrous and dark transformations that also speak to existential fears about unexpected or unwanted change. In “Halloween,” a ghost that speaks in rhyme helps Asphodel face the death of her older brother as she walks around a lonely Old World town dressed as a skeleton; the gorgeously atmospheric artwork will draw readers in, but the stilted, esoteric text is just as likely to push them away (“Don’t let others treat you just as they see fit,/ like a child’s toy you play with, and then abandon or quit,” the ghost advises her). Odd, angular caricatures drawn in black and white recount “The Story of Joe,” a disjointed tale about a boy’s transformation into a vampire. And the protagonist in “The Book of Jack,” ventures into an exquisite abandoned mansion, where he discovers a book that narrates his life as it unfolds, but he turns into a monster after it falls into the wrong hands. An unusual and unsettling collection, but one whose audience is likely to be limited. Ages 10–16. (Sept.)