The Skull: A Tyrolean Folktale
If Wednesday Addams and spooky things appeal to your little reader, we have some gems to share for Halloween. Jon Klassen‘s The Skull introduces us to Otilla, a brave little runaway who escapes into a dark forest. As she wanders, lost, she discovers a great old house inhabited by, of all things, a talking skull. But instead of screaming and running away, she helps the skull open the door.
Right away, that tells us a lot about Otilla. Otilla and the skull quickly become friends, drinking tea, eating pears and wandering through the enormous house. Klassen‘s wonderfully spare illustrations make the place feel simultaneously lonely and inviting, like somewhere you might be afraid to enter but reluctant to leave.
Things take a dark and chilling turn when Otilla learns that every night a headless skeleton comes looking for the skull. Her new friend is terrified. Otilla, however, decides that being frightened of something is not the same as being helpless against it. That gives this surreal little story an unexpectedly comforting heart. It’s strangely tender, funny, and just creepy enough. The skull, the thing we expect to fear, is gentle and vulnerable. The seemingly ordinary child becomes the brave and resourceful protector.
The Dark
Every child knows the nighttime terrain. The bedroom is safe (with a nightlight on). The hallway is questionable (though sometimes needed). And a basement, after the lights go out, is entered only in restless dreams. Laszlo is afraid of the dark, which is inconvenient because the dark lives in his house. Mostly it stays downstairs in the basement, although sometimes it turns up behind the shower curtain or waits, as the dark will do, inside a closet.
Sometimes Laszlo visits it during daylight, hoping that a little politeness will keep their relationship cordial. Then one night, the dark comes upstairs. The Dark brings together Lemony Snicket, the wonderfully gloomy alter ego of Daniel Handler, and illustrator Jon Klassen, whose shadows we have already happily entered in The Skull. Together they turn one of childhood’s oldest fears into a suspense story. When Laszlo‘s nightlight goes out, the dark speaks to him and asks him to follow. Armed with a flashlight, he crosses his silent, shadowy house and finally descends into the place he fears most.
Klassen makes that journey wonderfully tense, surrounding tiny islands and wedges of light with pages of black. What Laszlo discovers downstairs is surprisingly ordinary and kind. The dark, after all, has not summoned him to frighten him. It has something he needs. Artist Klassen built a subtle visual trick into the ending. Throughout the book, the dark speaks in white words against black pages while Laszlo belongs to the light. Near the end, his words appear in the dark’s territory. Laszlo didn’t destroy the darkness, but he learned how to live with it.
The lesson in The Dark is that courage doesn’t mean discovering there was never anything scary. Laszlo really is frightened, but he goes downstairs anyway and confronts the unknown to learn something about it. For children who occasionally require a race from the light switch to the bed, The Dark may be a fine companion to leave on the nightstand.
