Skelly the Skeleton Girl Book

Skelly, a little skeleton girl, finds a bone one day. Who could it belong to? As Skelly searches for the bone's owner, she questions everyone from her skeletal goldfish, to her man-eating plants, to the monster who lives beneath the stairs. Finally, Skelly locates the bone's owner—and makes a new friend. Rising talent Jimmy Pickering has created a mildly spooky and totally original cast of characters who populate Skelly's Tim Burton-esque world.

Publishers Weekly

Skelly, a pint-size Day of the Dead girl with pumpkin-orange bobbed hair, finds a misplaced bone and seeks its owner. Pickering's (Bubble Trouble) mixed-media illustrations picture Skelly in a black dress, white petticoat and buckle shoes, exposing an eerily wide cranium and delicately articulated hands. Readers see her arm bones, ribs and pelvis only when she X-rays herself: "Could it be a bone from me? No, it wasn't mine." Skelly tickles "the monster under the stairs" to see whether "he still had his funny bone." She questions tea-sipping ghosts and man-eating plants, and gets a quick entomology lesson ("Simply put, we spiders don't have bones"). In the end, a skeleton dog digging in her garden-moviegoers will recall the pup in Tim Burton's Corpse Bride-happily claims the lost item. Despite the ghoulish subtext, midnight palette and inky backdrops, Pickering keeps the mood breezy; Skelly bats long eyelashes and the dog wags a spiny tail. Like Margery Cuyler and S.D. Schindler's comical Skeleton Hiccups, this stylized tale suggests there's nothing to fear from Halloween haints. Ages 4-7. (Sept.)