Sally Anne Garland’s 2025 picture book Spooky is good, focused, unified, simple picture book.
I use those terms because some picture books are quite complicated and messy. Spooky is a unified pleasure from the cover on, which shows a black cat and its shadows. Each “o” in “Spooky” is slightly oversized, suggesting the extended “o” sound of “boo.”
A family moves into a new house. It is larger and larger than their previous house. It creaky and “cobwebby,”and has been sitting empty for a while. All of this description sets up expectations that this house might be haunted, and then the family starts to experience things. They see something move. Something knocks things onto the floor. What’s happening? The images signal what’s really happening at the same time they suggest haunting. There are shadows, wide eyes, and tense postures…but there are also tail tips whipping around corners and paw prints on the bathroom floor.
Eventually, the family follows “it” into the darkness, where they see eyes, and then a cat. The kids ask if they can keep it, and the parents take the somewhat original path of letting the cat decide if it wants to keep them. They do this by ignoring it, or treating it like “a little invisible ghost.” This means that the early pages that had shown tail tips became family scenes with a whole cat in the background. Then stealing the kids’ toys. Then joining them for a movie, and as a family. And they name it Spooky.
A light spooky vibe at the start, good ambiguity throughout, good progression, and good images adults can use to have kids spot things in corners. Realistic about how cats act, and mature about how to put strange animals at ease.
