The Skull Might Be the Children's Book Highlight of 2023
In any given year, there are maybe 10 children’s books I get excited about and look forward to. There might be many more than that that I enjoy, of course, but really anticipating their release is something else altogether. And that anticipation is multiplied tenfold when the book is made by a family favorite artist - as is the case with Jon Klassen’s The Skull.
Jon Klassen’s I Want My Hat Back was my son’s first book. In fact, he had his official baby photos with the book. Klassen has written and illustrated several of our all-time favorite books. That alone is enough to get us excited about his next release, but when you couple that with the simple fact that The Skull features a dark and spooky setting and theme - now you can begin to understand my utter glee. Klassen and Lemony Snicket’s The Dark, after all, is one of the best spooky picture books of all time.
Quite frankly, The Skull has been at the very top of my most-anticipated list for a long time. And it finally releases this Tuesday. And (it does me great pleasure to report) it’s spectacular. It has everything you could ask for. It does have its legitimately spooky moments. But it also has humor and love, and perhaps some serious and sad themes just below the surface.
The Skull is more than 100 pages long and it is split into 5 parts, but it reads quickly and every single page is illustrated. In that way, much like Klassen’s The Rock from the Sky, The Skull stretches the definition of picture book, and blurs the lines between picture book and chapter book.
Both my 7-year-old and my 10-year-old were quickly hooked and pulled in by The Skull. I started reading it to my daughter while she was cleaning her closet, and it didn’t take long until she stopped and came to sit by me on the couch to see the pictures. And for his part, my son visibly sat up straighter when the story took a noticeably spooky turn.
And that’s something Klassen does extremely well with this story. The big spooky turn is a very good one - something memorable. When the young runaway named Otilla is wandering through the woods, and when she discovers an abandoned mansion - the atmosphere is of course ominous. And when she meets the talking skull - the former master of the house - it’s certainly a creepy concept.
But in some ways it’s actually more whimsical and funny than it is scary. Our favorite bit of humor is probably how the skull points out that his decorative masks aren’t really meant to be worn, but on the next page they’re both wearing masks. Otilla quickly befriends the skull, and that ominous feeling almost completely dissipates - that is until the skull matter-of-factly lets Otilla know that a headless skeleton comes out to get him every night.
“You don’t want it to catch you.” “No,” whispered the skull. “I don’t.” “Will it come tonight?” said Otilla. The skull looked at the fire. “It comes every night,” he said.
This reveal is very well done, and the anticipation of this sudden turn of events is what made my son sit up on the edge of his seat. It also very beautifully mirrors a previous conversation between Otilla and the skull - in which she revealed she doesn’t want whoever it was that she ran away from to catch her either.
Retracing our steps back to the beginning, The Skull actually begins with a short passage found before even the title page. It states:
One night, in the middle of the night, while everyone else was asleep, Otilla finally ran away.
I can’t give enough praise to the construction of this book, and these little hints to Otilla’s backstory. One might even accidentally skip past this first page, since it appears before the title page, and in some ways it might feign to give the impression that the sentence is unimportant - but that couldn’t be further from the truth.
It’s the word “finally” that carries a lot of weight. “Otilla finally ran away.” For most of the book we have to take this information at face value. All we really know is that Otilla is a girl who ran away from the place she lived. But once we are confronted with the direct mirrored language between Otilla and the skull when they are talking about not wanting to be caught by their pursuers - the words of the skull (“It comes every night”) take on a more significant meaning, and become much more haunting.
Of course, deeper, tragic interpretations of abuse might completely fly over the head of an audience of children, and it’s very easy to enjoy The Skull completely on the surface - as a spooky tale of friendship, and an exciting, paranormal survival story. Outsmarting the headless skeleton and making a new lifelong friend makes for a wonderful story, and my kids love it.
But I will say that they’re going to be missing out on a piece of the true beauty of this story until they’re older. There’s something magnificent about the lengths that Otilla goes to protect her new friend from his pursuer. There’s something beautiful about the way she first tucks him into bed, and proceeds to go outside to grind the skeletons bones down into dust, and toss him into a bottomless pit. It’s overkill, perhaps even humorous overkill. But when you recall that “Otilla finally ran away,” and that she “doesn’t want to be caught” either - it’s quite wonderful seeing her calmly grind the skeleton into dust (literally while sipping tea) and throw him into a bottomless pit for her friend.
The Skull is a story about love and fear and, and it’s not only spooky and entertaining, but meaningful. It’s a wonderful work of art and a treasured addition to our library. It’s everything I hoped for when I first saw the cover so many months ago, and it’s everything I could ever want in a classic story to read aloud to my children.
Did you know you could get an autographed print from Jon Klassen if you’re one of the first people to pick up The Skull from our bookstore? Are you going to pick up a copy of The Skull this week? Have you read it yet? What are your thoughts? Let us know in the comments!
