What’s behind those cute smiling faces on the cover? An illustrated horror book that attempts to jump back and forth between life lessons and disturbing (not an understatement) content. So there’s that…

We see this dynamic right away. We have two completely normal looking pages and then all of a sudden a frightening image of a horror creature stares up at the reader smiling creepily on page 3 out of nowhere. You shouldn’t really need to hear anything else, but here is a taste of what else lurks in these pages:

• The book is based around a mansion filled with “horrors”, all illustrated for young readers. This place is described as “a refuge for any horror in need – ghosts, monsters… you name it”.
• The book flips back and forth between trying to make these creatures feel sweet and good and then over and over, out of nowhere a really dark and evil image will appear. These things get creepy… like WAY creepier than you would expect from the cover.
• One of the worst points in the book delivers really sad and dangerous messaging. The human who keeps these horrors locked up tells them humans are scared of them. When they escape, one of them turns each item in a top shop into genuinely evil looking versions of themselves. No cuteness here. Just dark and evil. Sadly the author has a group of shoppers come in and buy all this up, super excited to have new product and loving each item. The message comes across that the humans actually just love all the creepy and evil stuff (“But the humans clearly love creepy stuff!” and “the humans like scary stuff”).
• In a weird addition, there are points where the author presents horrors like they are some underrepresented and persecuted minority group.
• A line flippantly reads, “though you never know with ghost possessions”. There are references to a biker gang and witch magic.
• The town has a creepy festival. School has a related haunted house.
• When leaving the house to go into town, one horror almost joyfully suggests, “Let’s give them a genuine horror experience! You guys can possess stuff, right?”.

This is all just a taste.

Note: Please don’t underestimate how creepy and evil the scenes we reference sprinkled throughout the book really are. We pray no young children will even flip through this colorfully illustrated book that will inevitably be in the young children’s section at libraries and stores.