by Moe Zilla

Created on: March 14, 2009

It's the trickiest children's book ever, with a real surprise ending. The book is about fright, and it creates a real atmosphere. (On the cover, the book even one big eye, and on the copyright page, there's bats.) You can laugh at the fright and enjoy the spooky build-up. (There's a scared child alone who's reading a spooky book - alone on a dark, stormy night.) It's a children's book with an edge - and along the way, author Steve Patschke uses a very clever twist.

One candle is lit in the dark house as Andrew opens the spooky book. It's the story of a redheaded girl alone her own house - opening a spooky book! Her name is Zo Zo, and she's reading a story in which winds howl around a ghost-haunted house...with one lonely boy. Suddenly the wind startles Zo Zo - in her book - while a real wind startles Andrew. They'd both mistaken the wind for a ghost, but then Andrew laughs and decides "A book can't hurt you."

Which is exactly what Zo Zo had said two pages earlier...

Andrew wonders if she's scared - or if she talks to herself as much as he does. But when Zo Zo mistakes a flash of lightning for goblins...so does Andrew! Matthew McElligott contributed excellent illustrations to the book, which make it even spookier. Their weird simplicity makes the book that much scarier, even before he starts drawing creepy houses and strange angles. Shadows crisscross enormous walls making patterns like a face, and in the lightning colors form shapes like watchful goblins. Even the children's faces are hidden, buried in books so the drawings show only their frightened eyes.

The book has a happy ending, and one that's genuinely surprising. The girl in the book runs for help in her neighborhood, and she knocks on the door of a house. There's an enormous crash inside - and just then, Andrew hears a knock on his own door. He knocks over a broomstick - which makes an enormous crash - and then, frightened, opens his own door very slowly.

What do you think is waiting there when he turns the page?

It's the redheaded girl named Zo Zo! (And the picture shows two screaming children - both Zo Zo and Andrew.) And then the rain stops, and the girl introduces herself. She's just moved into the neighborhood. And the last illustration draws a view from above, looking down on the happy house under a bright, shiny moon. It's a clever book, and the author earns his way to the epitaph he provides at the story's end.

"You can ask any full moon or mist moving fluky. Is it true? Yes it's true. That book was spooky!"

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