Book Review: Through the Woods by Emily Carroll

Through the Woods
by Emily Carroll (741.5 Car)

I have been a fan of Emily Carroll’s artwork for a long time, and if you’ve been on the internet in the past ten years there’s a good chance you have also had the opportunity to view her strange and haunting illustrations. In Through the Woods, Carroll takes the beautiful fairy tales and dark nighttime stories of folklore long past and twists them masterfully into pages ripe with the nightmares you’ve long forgotten the specifics of by the time you wake up, yet still leave you with unease and longing. If you’re a fan of Poe, of Brontë, or of any story macabre and spooky, you will treasure Through the Woods.

[If you enjoy this, you may also wish to try Edgar Allen Poe’s Tales of Death and Dementia, by Edgar Allen Poe, Alice Isn’t Dead, by Joseph Fink, Welcome to Night Vale, also by Joseph Fink, Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Bronte, The Secret Garden, by Frances Hodgson Burnett, or Thornhill, by Pam Smy.]

[ publisher’s Through the Woods web page ] | [ official Emily Carroll web site ]

Recommended by Elanor J.
Gere Branch Library

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New reviews appear every month on the Staff Recommendations page of the BookGuide website. You can visit that page to see them all, or watch them appear here in the BookGuide blog individually over the course of the entire month. Click the tag for the reviewer's name to see more of this reviewer’s recommendations!

The Creeps: A Deep Dark Fears Collection by Fran Krause

The Creeps: A Deep Dark Fears Collection
by Fran Krause [741.5 Kra] 

This one caught my eye on the New Books display at the downtown library, and I decided to give it a chance. Artist Fran Krause collected a wide variety of different people’s personal “fears”, then illustrated them in comics/graphic-novel format. Each “fear” gets either a single-panel cartoon or a short comic strip to graphically represent how that fear would play out. Some of the “fears” are merely thought=provoking, or simply ironic. Others, however, earn the book its title, and are extremely creepy or even grotesque, made even more so by the ordinariness and simplicity of the cartoon art style. In many ways, I would recommend this volume to anyone who is a fan of Gahan Wilson’s surreal cartoons, or Charles Addams’ single-panel newspaper and magazine cartoons (the artist best known as the creator of the macabre Addams Family). Perhaps, the closest artist in style and tone is Edward Gorey and his Gashlycrumb Tinies, which imagines 26 different horrible deaths, one per letter of the alphabet.

[If you enjoy this, you may also wish to try The World of Edward Gorey, by Edward Gorey, or I Paint What I See, by Gahan Wilson.]

[ publisher’s official The Creeps web page ] | [ official Fran Krause Tumblr feed ]

Recommended by Scott C.
Bennett Martin Public Library

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New reviews appear every month on the Staff Recommendations page of the BookGuide website. You can visit that page to see them all, or watch them appear here in the BookGuide blog individually over the course of the entire month. Click the tag for the reviewer's name to see more of this reviewers recommendations!

Collectibles for the Kitchen, Bath and Beyond: A Pictorial Guide by Bercovici

Collectibles for the Kitchen, Bath and Beyond: A Pictorial Guide
by Ellen Bercovici, with Bobbie Zucker Bryson and Deborah Gillham [683.82 qBer]

Here is a pictorial guide to some items I didn’t even know existed – and I’m a fan and collector of kitchen items of the 1930’s, 1940’s and 1950’s.

I enjoyed browsing through the photos of Pie Birds and viewing the different colors and poses. I remember my grandmother using the black bird gazing skyward and have always regretted that one getting away from me at the estate sale.

Laundry Sprinkler Bottles are new to me. These items are filled with water and sprinkled over laundry just before ironing. My mother owned a Sprinkler Bottle Top with a rubber stopper that she would insert into the top of a Coke bottle and then shake over Dad’s white work shirts. I always thought that was the coolest item, and I still own it. But the bottles themselves I had not encountered before. You’ll find them in cat shapes, as elephants, as Dutch couples, the list is endless. I MUST locate the fireman figurine holding the firehose. You tip the figure and the water sprinkles out of the hose. Now how cool is that?

This book also covers Napkin Dolls (kinda weird), Razor Blade Banks (very handy), and Egg Timers (some pretty cool ones). Fun viewing all around.

Until.

You encounter the Decorative Stringholders.

Here is your Halloween horror reading.

Stringholders in bird shapes (one with a pair of scissors through his head! Page 54.) Vegetable and fruit shapes (Miss Strawberry, page 71, with her demonic look). Girl and Women stringholders, Boys and Men stringholders, pirates, SANTA, chefs. And clowns.

I had to stop. I couldn’t make it to the Whimsical Children’s Cups.

Perhaps you are better at horror stories than I. Or you could just skip the stringholders and enjoy the rest of this book.

Recommended by Charlotte M.
Bennett Martin Public Library

Have you read this one? What did you think? Did you find this review helpful?

New reviews appear every month on the Staff Recommendations page of the BookGuide website. You can visit that page to see them all, or watch them appear here in the BookGuide blog individually over the course of the entire month. Click the tag for the reviewer's name to see more of this reviewers recommendations!