From My Reading Chair…
The endpapers lay the first brick before the title page has even clocked in…
There is a town noticeboard bustling with hilarious supernatural businesses: Cyclops Optometry, Mr Lycan’s moonlight yoga and, tucked among the glorious nonsense, a vampire family whose home has been overrun by wild zombie garlic. Imagine the insurance claim?!
The opening spread promises proper moonlit peril with ghosts waking and tools glinting in the dark... Eeeek!
Then we turn the page and… WHACK! Oh, it seems the monsters have come to build something. I’ve mistaken the, erm, night shift for a nightmare!
Frank Tupta’s rhyming couplets turn the construction into a great clanking procession. The language clatters, rumbles and blunders along beside the workers, with werewolf loggers and ghostly labourers joining the undertaking. The rhythm keeps the building work moving, comedic mishaps and all. There’s such read-aloud joy in language you can get your whole mouth around and make a magnificent racket with!
Kyle Beckett’s earthy browns, ember oranges and graveyard greens create a landscape soaked in moonlight. His broad, graphic shapes keep the busy double-page spreads easy to follow, with smaller details waiting for us to inspect once we’ve taken in the action. Enough space to understand what’s being built, enough mischief to keep my eyeballs occupied.
What really gets me is that the strongest tool used in the book, is empathy. This whole community of monstrous creatures is unified in helping a family who needs a new home. Their peculiar talents have a practical purpose, with everyone paying it forward (although, pretty sure some of their construction methods might give a building inspector cause for concern!).
The vampire family arrives, and that little endpaper notice board all clicks into place. All this hammering, hauling and howling, and now they have a home.
Community spirit, with considerably more, ahem, ‘spirits’ than usual!
How to Build a Haunted House is a rollicking, rhyming night shift, full of construction chaos and a whole lot of heart beneath the hard hats. Pass me a hard hat and point me towards the zombie-garlic clearance crew...
Creep on Reading, Pumpkins!