If Hatke’s “Basement” is a quiet, haunted museum, Remy Lai’s graphic novel GHOST BOOK (Holt, 320 pp., $14.99, ages 8 to 12) is a crackle-pop of melodrama.
Twelve-year-old July Chen can see ghosts that aren’t visible to anyone else — a useful skill during Hungry Ghost Month, when ghosts invade the world of the living.
A boy ghost her age named William is at once friend and foe (turns out he’s not dead but in a coma; for him to live, she must die).
(The bureaucracy here is worthy of New York City Building Code: a Birth Register, a Death Register, a Life Register, an Underlings Register.)
All these scenes are drawn with a dreamlike zaniness, hewing closer to anime than Lai’s past work (“Pawcasso,” “Pie in the Sky,” “Fly on the Wall”).
Persons:
”, Milo, Remy Lai’s, Chen, William, he’s
Organizations:
New
Locations:
New York