Through the Woods

Starred review from July 21, 2014
Canadian graphic artist Carroll uses familiar horror motifsâthe first wife's ghost, the monster that dwells in the forestâto create fresh and disturbing tales. Sure in her handling of line, color, and sequential art techniques, she revels in period settings, placing her five stories in identifiable historical eras that include colonial North America and the Roaring Twenties. Carefully drawn clothing and furnishings provide ironic backdrops for Lovecraftian revelations of parasitical possession and hideous evil. In the most explicitly gruesome story, a dowdy girl named Mabel is forced to stay with her prosperous brother and his perfect wife, who, Mabel begins to see, is a monster inhabiting the skin of a human: "I only wanted to wear her," the wife says dreamily of the housekeeper, whose bloodied wrist Mabel has spotted, "but when I tried her on, there was no stretch left." Instead of the gratifying defeat of evil, the gothic stories often leave off unsettlingly with a twist of the knife, just at the moment some fresh horror beckons. Ages 14âup. Agent: Jen Linnan, Linnan Literary Management.

Starred review from June 15, 2014
A print and Web comics artist offers five creep-out chillers (four new) with folk-tale motifs and thoroughly disquieting art.Well-placed lines of terse, hand-lettered commentary and dialogue reinforce narrative connections but are also as much visual elements as are the impenetrable shadows, grim figures, and stark, crimson highlights in Carroll's inky pictures. Making expert use of silent sequences, sudden close-ups and other cinematic techniques to crank up the terror, the author opens and closes in a dimly lit bedroom (much like yours), bookending the five primary stories. In "Our Neighbor's House," a trio of sisters are taken one by one by a never-seen smiling man. In the next, a bride discovers that "A Lady's Hands Are Cold"-as are the other pieces (seen in close, icky detail) of her husband's dismembered but not entirely dead former wife. Two cases of supernatural possession ("His Face All Red" and "My Friend Janna") follow. The collection is capped by a true screamer in which a teenager's memories of her mother's tales of a cellar-dwelling monster with a "sweet, wet voice" segue into a horrific revelation about her pretty new sister-in-law. Lonely houses, dark woods and wolves? Check. Spectral figures with blood-red innards? Check. Writhing tentacles bursting from suddenly inhuman mouths? Check!A sure winner for any reader with a yen to become permanently terrified. Brilliant. (Graphic horror. 13-18)

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Starred review from July 1, 2014

Gr 8 Up-Not exactly a book of fairy tales, these illustrated short stories are more a series of ruminations interwoven with dreams and fairy tales. Classic elements are here-there's a girl in a red hooded cloak, and a girl who wears a ribbon around her throat-but the entries expand and wander in different (and darker) directions. The illustrations (done in ink and graphite on Bristol board and then digitally colored) fill the entire page, so at first glance the work looks more like a picture book than a graphic novel. The hues are bold and striking, with the color red dominating the pages in the form of sunsets, flushed cheeks, bloodshot eyes, twisted word balloons, a deep crimson ruby, and even pools of blood. This collection contains four new stories and one ("His Face All Red") that was originally published as a webcomic on Carroll's website. This is a beautifully rendered but deeply chilling collection of vignettes that will be most appreciated by teens and adults who are fans of fairy tales, horror, and the things that hide in the dark. A delight for Edgar Allan Poe and Alvin Schwartz enthusiasts.-Andrea Lipinski, New York Public Library

Copyright 2014 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from August 1, 2014
Grades 7-12 *Starred Review* A wealthy young woman weds a man in a lonely old house, and at night she hears a forlorn song of unavenged murder lilting from the walls. A girl spends the summer with her brother and his fianc'e, who is not what she seems. Three sisters wait for their father to return, but one by one they disappear with a tall man in a broad-brimmed hat. All the tales in Carroll's debut graphic novel are fairly standard ghost stories, but it is her eerie illustrationspopping with bold color on black, glossy pagesthat masterfully build terrifying tension and a keep-the-lights-on atmosphere. With cantilevered perspectives and dark inky splotches speckling the corners, the spooky images of stark forests, gaping caves, bloodshot eyes, and ominous shadows are brilliantly married to the text printed in manic handwritten fonts, some crazed and swirling, others coldly deadpan. The best ghost stories make great use of dramatic tension, and Carroll is no slouch here, either: she amplifies the scariness of the storiesfull of ghosts, murder, and monsterswith startling page turns revealing grotesque, squeal-inducing images. A wonderful heir to the legacy of Alvin Schwartz and Stephan Gammell's iconic Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark (1981).(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)

January 1, 2015
Five unsettling tales in graphic-novel format are inspired by common folkloric themes--from wolves in the woods to peculiar visitors to dark possessions. Carroll experiments with the uncanny, burrowing inside the reader's mind and twisting what should be safe into something startlingly strange. Swirling, chaotic, hand-lettered, and ink-smudged illustrations (at times reminiscent of Stephen Gammell) bring each grisly story to life.

(Copyright 2015 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)

November 1, 2014
Carroll crafts five unsettling tales in graphic-novel format inspired by common folkloric themes -- from wolves in the woods to peculiar visitors to dark possessions. In "Our Neighbor's House," three sisters who find themselves alone in a cabin are taken, one by one, in the middle of the night by a smiling stranger. In "A Lady's Hands Are Cold," a young bride is tormented by the singing corpse of her new husband's first wife, dismembered and disposed of within the walls of his manor. A man comes face to face with the sinister doppelganger of the brother he murdered in "His Face All Red," while "My Friend Janna" and "The Nesting Place" focus on malevolent spirit possession. Carroll experiments with the uncanny, presenting characters and settings that are both familiar and alien. She posits that "the worst kind of monster was the burrowing kind. The sort that crawled into you and made a home there," and that's exactly what Carroll accomplishes, burrowing inside the reader's mind and twisting what should be safe into something startlingly strange. For instance, one illustration of a little girl tucked into bed evokes Goodnight Moon, with its green, yellow, and red palette; yet the safety of that childhood bedtime story is stripped away when a wolf stalks up to the window. Swirling, chaotic, hand-lettered, and ink-smudged illustrations (at times reminiscent of Stephen Gammell) bring each grisly story to life. shara l. hardeson

(Copyright 2014 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)