LITTLE WOLF’S HAUNTED HALL FOR SMALL HORRORS

The spelling-challenged correspondent of Little Wolf’s Book of Badness (1999) and Little Wolf’s Diary of Daring Deeds (p.641) turns from would-be schoolmaster to a new vocation in this heavily illustrated eyeroller. Thanks to some canny advertising (“Learn secret powers from our Bigbad ghost like how to popup up all of a suddenly like toast . . .”), Little Wolf and his friends Yeller and Stubbs, and little brother Smellybreff, draw a crowd of prospective students to Haunted Hall School—only to have them frightened away by the bottle-dwelling, “bakebean” chomping ghost of Uncle Bigbad. But boastful Bigbad also offers a way to stave off financial ruin, promising to share his ability to uncover hidden treasure if the younglings can find someone he can’t scare. Enter Normus, a bear cub with a big enough chip on his shoulder to stand up to Bigbad—but enter also Mister Twister the fox, master of disguise, who takes advantage of a distraction to, well, spirit Bigbad and his bottle away. Little Wolf et al. reinvent themselves as the Yelloweyes Forest Detective Agency (“Tracking Tricking Dizgizzing Our Speciality”) and trot off, hot on the trail. Stay tuned. Ross scatters inkblots and line drawings liberally across the pages of Little Wolf’s letters home, capturing the combination of low-level-foolery and creative orthography that characterizes this farcical import. (Fiction. 8-10)