Ghoulia-Making Friends Can Be Scary, but this is 100% fun

There was a period where I watched The Nightmare Before Christmas at least twice a week. I found it very coincidental that our 6 year-old started watching it-on his own accord and could sing the songs. Ghoulia, Making Friends Can Be Scary by Barbara Cantini is a spiritual cousin to Christmas, Coraline and Paranorman. It’s an emerging reader’s book that brings an all age appropriate scare and spook to readers aged 6-9.

The vocabulary will be too much for younger readers to read on their own. However, that age, plus those older kids, will delight in the full page color illustrations of Ghoulia, her spooky family and her quest to have friends. There is so much color on each page and jammed with fabulous illustrations that one could easily confuse Ghoulia for a young graphic novel. Between that and its format I can see why; but this is a book, albeit with age appropriate Goth and a presentation that lends itself to a large audience.

Ghoulia is a pale patchwork zombie child that can remove her arms, sew them back on and looks like Marty Feldman with long black hair. She’s a typical girl except that she lives in a haunted house on the outskirts of town, has a dog named Tragedy, cat named Shadow and various aunts or uncles that are haunting the place or forbidding her to make contact with others.

She tries to dress up like a normal girl, but her aunt sees right through her garish appearance and faints on the floor. Thankfully Ghoulia learns about a day that’s coming up called Halloween. She does her homework and devises a plan where she can be herself, in addition to getting out and meeting some other kids.

Once outside of Crumbling Manor’s gate she sees a witch, ghost, mummy and more. Of course, these are the human kinds of monsters, but as she’s out on Halloween they’re all equal. They’re all equal, that’s kind of the point of Ghoulia. Her parents think she’s too different or weird, but when she finally gets to hang out with other kids and they realize that she’s a real zombie they’re not terrified. Even Auntie Departed warms up to the idea of human children playing in the yard and the kids form a club called the Monster Society.

The pages in Ghoulia are thicker than standard book pages. Its shape is rectangular, like a smaller version of a comic book. Certain letters and colors on the cover are glossy, which allow it to ‘pop’ a little bit. All of this, plus the art and story make up for a really great book that’s not just around for Halloween. The final page in the book teases another entry into the Ghoulia saga, Ghoulia And The Mysterious Visitor. A further bonus for parents is the retail price for Ghoulia. It retails for $9.99, which isn’t bad for a book with this many pages. However, if you look around just a bit online you can pick it up for $7.50, which is a righteous deal.