Reviews for Ghosts, Ghouls, and Other Nightmares : Spooky Stories

The average rating for Ghosts, Ghouls, and Other Nightmares : Spooky Stories based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2012-10-14 00:00:00 William Hickey I have loved all of Allen Say's picture books. He is an exceptional artist and a wonderful story teller. His main themes are the coming together of Japanese and American cultures in some way, whether through telling his own story, or that of his parents, his daughter, or his grandparents, or even other people. The Ink-keeper's Apprentice is one of the few non-picture books I know of written by Say. In this book, he tells of his experience learning to draw well under the tutelage of a master, the famous cartoonist, Noro Shinpei. This book is a more in-depth version of his later autobiographical work (part graphic novel), Drawing from Memory. His experience is unique. A child of parents who divorced shortly after the end of WWII, he lived alone in a studio-type apartment while attending middle school. I have a hard time imagining a young teenager roaming the streets of Tokyo, living alone, going to school, and seeking out his own personal tutor to train him in the arts. And yet this is the life young Say lived. His experiences weren't without danger. At this young age, he was exposed to some intense and scary experiences, including riots, transvestites, prostitutes, and other things that were a lot to take in. We see the world of POST-WWII Tokyo through the eyes of a young teenager, and it is provoking. The novel ends with Say joining with his father to emigrate to America, closing one chapter in his life and starting another. In a symbolic act, Say burns all his sketchbooks, as he prepares to start life anew. When I first read of this in his other book, Drawing From Memory, I didn't understand why. But this book gave new understanding. "In an hour's time all my drawings turned to ashes. I felt cleansed. I was ready to start a new life in a strange country." Beautiful. Just beautiful.

Review # 2 was written on 2019-05-05 00:00:00 Jason Keesecker I read this to better understand Allen Say's books. His beautifully illustrated children's books often feature protagonists who are outsiders living in cultural contexts in which they do not feel they belong. The sense of isolation in his books is often unresolved (longing for fatherland when in a new country and vice versa) or resolved through costly compromise (lingering unanswerable questions or apotheosis through foreignness). As I suspected, this somewhat introspective autobiographical work sheds light on much of Say's picture books.