There's No Such Thing as Ghosts! Book

Originally published in Belgium as Les fantômes, c̜a n'existe pas!, this engaging picture-book follows a boisterous young boy as he attempts to discover whether the 'haunted' house in his new neighborhood actually contains any ghosts. Warned by his mother to stay away, he is immediately drawn to the house, searching high and low, under and behind furniture, and both before and behind him, in an attempt to startle some spooks into revealing themselves. Finding nothing, he eventually concludes that it must indeed be true, that there is no such thing as ghosts...

Chosen as one of our December selections over in The International Book Club to which I belong, where we read a children's book from a different country each month, the main entertainment value in Emmanuelle Eeckhout's There's No Such Thing As Ghosts! lies in the contradiction between artwork and text, as the little boy continually misses the spirits that are all around him. The artwork, done in lovely black and white silhouettes, with the occasional yellow and pink accent, is quite appealing in its own right. All in all, this was a sweet little ghost story, one I would recommend to younger children who still prefer the sweet to the scary. I hope that more of this talented author/illustrator's work is made available in English!