GRISELDA SNOOK’S SPECTACULAR BOOKS

A boy learns to love reading—with help from a most unusual bookseller.

Henry isn’t a book lover. But when he helpfully returns a dropped key to Griselda Snook in time for her bookstore’s opening, she invites him in. She puts out a plate of doughnuts, but the plate quickly runs off. Henry chases it to the cookbook section, where he bumps into a Frankenstein’s monster in search of a joke book. Griselda makes a suggestion, which Henry tracks down. Together, the two find “exciting,” “noisy,” and “spook-tacularly silly” offerings for a bevy of ghoulish customers, among them a werewolf, a mummy, ghosts, and a skeleton. But Henry still hasn’t found a book for himself. When a volume falls off the shelf and unleashes a dragon, Henry searches for a spell to tame it—to no avail. A witch named Magenta Screech arrives to put things right, tells the bookstore patrons a series of scary stories, and finally hands Henry the perfect tale. The story is slight—and it’s never made clear just what makes Magenta’s suggestion the ideal offering—but the spooky setting is bewitching, and the sentiments are unimpeachable. Wiry linework and a matte black-and-orange color scheme make the Halloween theme clear, while the assorted monsters are clearly delighted to be here; details will tempt viewers to linger in this bookstore. Henry and Griselda are brown-skinned, while Magenta is pale-skinned; human characters are diverse.

A sweetly spooky tribute to reading and bookshops.