Ghosts Hardcover – Picture Book, November 26, 2013

A bit of an odd book, maybe my girls are too young for it, but they found parts to be unsettling, or even scary... it suggested things that introduced fears that hadn’t been there before about ghosts. Not quite as light hearted to our audience as others had suggested...

6yo & 8yo loved it

Delightful story, beautifully and fancifully illustrated!

This is a strange book. Because of the praise for the illustrator for a different book I decided to read this. I’m an art student and I’m always interested in illustration and specifically art in children’s literature, I’ve read over a thousand children’s picture books in the last two decades.Basically in this book different mysterious things we see in life or negative things children experience in life are blamed on being a caused by a niche type of ghost. The book is inconsistent and sometimes not good. The most disturbing to me was the ghost of the parents bedroom. There is a scene of an angry boy wrestling on top of a dog and twisting it’s ear and the dog is in pain. It also says “Do not enter is that clear? Get out of here all of you! I don’t ever want to see you again. Go play by yourselves for a little while. I mean really!” These are pretty negative messages. Adults may wonder about the magazine peeking out from under the bed...similar title to a big adult product company in USA. See my photo. The bathroom ghost is supposedly the cause of smelly dirty laundry. The kitchen ghost is the one who makes a mess and leaves it. The ghost of the library is creepy and said to be there with you and living among the books. The ghost living in the paintings might scare some kids. Do we want kids to be afraid of visiting in art museum or a library?Inconsistent is sometimes with a ghost to avoid it, the children are advised to do good things such as turn off the TV which has too much bad news and for a gray day to avoid the ghost, you should go do something creative, invent laugh play, sing and dream. I didn’t love the illustrations or find themcaptivating.Beside the fact that the book might scare kids, make them more confused than ever, instead of empowering them or alleviating fears. Also obviously some families will have a real problem with the topic of ghosts And might not think that this book is alignment with their belief and/ or it maybe against their religious beliefs. Not funny or entertaining really.Weird book, 2 stars = Don’t Like It.

3 stars at Amazon means "It's Okay". It's not really a negative review, more of a... "meh"....And after processing the colorful, imaginative and distinctive artwork and concept of this book, that's the best I can muster. Over time, we'll see if I tick it up to 4 stars, based on any future repeated "read it again" requests from the 5-year-old.As it is, it's a perplexing book. It is kind of a like a reference book, a handbook of the kinds of "real" ghosts there are in the household, as described by one of them, Toasty the chimney ghost.... as described to a classic white-sheet-with-2-black-holes-for-eyes dragging-a-ball-and-chain ghost at the beginning of the book. This is a fake ghost, according to Toasty.Families will have differing opinions about how scary any of these ghosts are, and the night time ghost is by far the scariest, although my pre-reading kid enjoyed my alternate reading of that page, skipping the part where it'll creep into your nightmares if you're not careful. Mostly the ghosts are just kind of quirky, and the real enjoyment of the book comes from poring over the lovely images and finding interesting aspects of them. "Oh, look, there's an elephant outside that window!"The book isn't profoundly conceived enough to convince anyone of an alternate world of ghosts to what we in the west are used to, and there isn't really a story, per se. At the end, I asked my girl which was her favorite ghost or page, and she went back to the beginning and pointed out the sheet-and-2-eyes ghost. "That one", she said. Only 5, and already ruined for alternate ghost worlds!

The way this is written is a little weird, and it's going to be a like it hate it book where some parents will hate it. (Parents have to read to kids, so it's important for a kids book to be for adults too.) The format of the book is like this: Each two page spread is about a specific kind of made up ghost. For example, there is the Ghost of the Painting, and some facts about it are that it's looking out of the painting at you. Then there's the Ghost of the Parents' Bedroom and it tells you to get out and not touch things. The format is a bit like an alternative comic or something. My husband hates it. I was fine with it. I brought this to a family holiday. My sister in law and mother seemed OK with it, although my mother didn't like the book not because of the format but instead because she thought the ghosts inside were a bit pointless. Both 4 year olds liked the book.Nothing at all is scary, and the ghosts just do normal things like eat food and watch TV.Art is more detailed than the cover illustration and is a similar slightly abstract/blocky style. There's enough detail that the full page spreads get used. Since each page has a blurb about a ghost, there's a lot going on on each page and some hidden ghosts and details that you find of you look longer.As long as the format (doesn't have a story or plot and instead has facts about made up ghosts for each room of the house) seems fine to you, this is a good book to read to young children. The recommended age of 4 to 8 years old seems accurate and an older child will probably have a phase where they think it's silly.