I love this for the full commitment to weirdness and for the sheer thoroughness of Otilia dismembering the headless skeleton. It's very fairy tale and very satisfying. ( )

My review of this book can be found on my YouTube Vlog at:

https://youtu.be/M9IeySwNsFI

Enjoy! ( )

The original story is in A Book of Ghosts and Goblins written by Ruth Manning-Sanders and illustrated by Robin Jacques (1969) and turns out to be rather different from what Mr. Klassen remembered after reading it before he did a presentation in a library in Alaska. In the Author's Note, he explains that this is the way folktales work.
I started reading this with a couple of 5th graders, who decided that it was maybe too scary/creepy to continue. We read I Want My Hat Back instead---not sure if this isn't ultimately more disturbing. ( )

New Year's Day family picture book read-aloud celebration! (Book 1 of 5)

A dark and eerie tale with a butt-kicking protagonist.

Warning: Some kids might find this a little too scary.

Side note: This book is an adaptation of a folk tale retold in A Book of Ghosts and Goblins by Ruth Manning-Sanders, but Klassen discusses in his "Author's Note" how much he changed, so I found a copy available on Internet Archive. It's a short chapter and took only a few minutes to read, and I was happy to get the full backstory of the skull that Klassen dropped from his retelling. And it was amusing to see how visually different Klassen's interpretation is from that of illustrator Robin Jacques. ( )