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Book Review: The Snake and the Ghost by Tim Jackson

The Snake and the Ghost by Tim Jackson

HaggusArts Publications, 2016

ISBN-13: 978-0-9968544-0-5

Available: Hardcover, Kindle edition

 

The Snake and the Ghost is a self-published picture book about Haggus, a snake who takes a bully’s dare to visit a “haunted” house. The reality is that the “ghosts” are the human residents of the house, who scream and swat at him with a broom. Looking in a mirror, he is terrified by his own reflection, realizes that the “ghosts” must be afraid of him, and decides to try talking to them. He then encounters an actual ghost– the grandmother of the little boy who lives in the house– and she can understand him, and confides in him. Haggus then slips away and paints a picture of the grandmother and the little boy, using his tail. Then he is engulfed in darkness and disappears, as the boy’s father scoops him into a sack. The author ends by reassuring the reader that Haggus does eventually return to his family.

Jackson wrote with the intent of creating a spooky tale of a snake wanting an adventure, and the atmospheric, black and white illustrations, done in charcoal, evoke the immediate reaction from the reader that this is going to be creepy (some of these unfortunately lost some of their impact for me, as Haggus is cartoonishly depicted in comparison to the otherwise muted images). However, the central and most essential part of the story is the conversation between the ghost and the snake. Despite my own quibble with the ability of a snake and a ghost to communicate with each other in spoken English, this is the most genuine and heartfelt part of the book, with the grandmother explaining the humans’ fear of both snakes and ghosts, and sharing her grief with Haggus in a way that makes him look past his own wants to help her reconnect with her grandson. While Jackson may have been aiming for a dark and spooky  adventure story, the way he portrays grief and love in this part of the story is what really touches the reader, and the darkness and shading of the images really bring that out. The adventure is incidental.

While the book has a professional look and terrific illustrations, the author really needed a copy editor. The biggest issue is that there are awkward changes in verb tense, and there are also occasional errors in spelling, punctuation, and grammar. While most of these won’t impair understanding for the reader, they bothered me, and the lack of copy editing in a book that otherwise was clearly designed with care is really surprising.

Jackson strikes me as an author with potential, who needs the help of an editor to tighten and present his story. If he puts as much effort into his writing as he does into design and illustration, he’ll do great things. In the meantime, The Snake and the Ghost , with its focus on grief and love, has an immediate use as bibliotherapy for older children and adults dealing with grief, particularly over the death of a family member. It very much reached my own daughter, and I highly recommend it for this purpose. Beyond this audience, at its existing price point as a hardcover (and the Kindle edition can’t possibly reproduce the illustrations with the same impact), this book will mainly have appeal to individuals and libraries in his area, as part of a collection of local authors. With Halloween approaching, local libraries in the Louisville area may want to track down the author for a reading. Appropriate for ages 9 and up.

Highly recommended for bibliotherapy collections on grief.

 

 


Monster Movie Month: Colleen Wanglund Writes About The Vengeful Female Ghost in Asian Horror

Well, this time I just got lucky. Really, we all did.

I had no plans to write about Asian horror cinema, or ghosts, for Monster Movie Month. But one of our reviewers, Colleen Wanglund, is an expert on Asian horror cinema, and in addition to the reviews that she wrote for us for Monster Movie Month, I discovered that she also wrote a fascinating article for the feminist online horror zine Ax Wound, “The Vengeful Feminine: “The Asian Female Ghost is a True Feminist”. Great writing, and worth reading. In addition to her critical analysis, Colleen names a number of Asian horror movies; librarians unfamiliar with Asian horror may want to take note, for the next time a patron asks “Do you have any movies like The Ring“?

Bag of Bones Read-Alikes

Are you having a rush on Stephen King at the library this week? It could be because of the A&E miniseries based on his book Bag of Bones. However, Bag of Bones is unlike much of King’s other work, so if you don’t have enough copies to satisfy your patrons, and they’re looking for read-alikes rather than books by the same author (and King’s works run the gamut- not all of his work is going to appeal to everyone) here are some stories of ghosts and the supernatural that might appeal.

The Night Strangers by Chris Bohjalian
The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson
Ghost Story by Peter Straub
The Turn of the Screw by Henry James
Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
The Secret of Crickley Hall by James Herbert
So Cold the River by Michael Kortya
Those Across the River by Christopher Buehlman
77 Shadow Street by Dean Koontz
The Harrowing by Alexandra Sokoloff

You may also want to check out our Haunted House Horror Fiction List or our reviews on the Supernatural and Occult section of the site

Happy haunting, and enjoy the show!