There's a ghost in this house

Decidedly unscary ghosts--the kind that look like sheets with holes for eyes--lurk in a house being searched by a green-skinned, pigtailed child in this novelty-leaning picture book. Welcoming the reader, the child begins, "I have heard... there's a GHOST in this house!" Peering over a porcelain bathroom sink, the figure continues, "Have you ever seen a ghost?" With the help of translucent pages that have ghostly images printed on them, readers can conjure the apparitions; on the bathroom spread, for example, one appears right behind the child, making a face in the mirror. Jeffers adds loose line drawings to found black-and-white photographs of an 18th-century mansion that has plenty of dark corners--the narrator climbs a library ladder, lingers in hallways, and peers in cupboards and under a bed. Since readers decide when the ghosts appear, anxiety-inducing suspense isn't an issue in this conceptually comic treat that puts the reader in control. Ages 4--8. (Sept.)

A child with numerous questions welcomes readers at the door of a stately, many-chimneyed mansion: will we help find the rumored ghosts in the house? Have we ever seen any? Do we know where to look? Viewers explore the house with the narrator, who peeks into rooms and closets; searches the library, a chimney, and the attic; and more. Jeffers features monochromatic images of rooms from architectural reference books and furniture catalogs, onto which he draws the narrator, who pops off the page with jade-colored skin and hair and in a dress with vivid chartreuse stripes. Readers turn translucent pages adorned with paintings of ghosts that reveal, on the next spread's verso, the location of the ghosts the narrator asks us to find: cue excited giggles as viewers spot specters near, but always hiding from, the narrator. The ghosts, depicted as white sheets with holes for eyes, are endearing and playful (gleefully jumping on the bed while the child looks under it), never too frightening or threatening to children, who are in control of the page-turns -- and, therefore, of the ghost-sightings. Delightfully, we're also told that a collective noun for this group is "a fraid of ghosts." Julie Danielson January/February 2022 p.88(c) Copyright 2022. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.