by Ridley Pearson
Illustrated by Abigail Larson
3 stars
This book features backstories and twists on Aladdin, Chernabog from Fantasia, Snow White, Beauty and the Beast, Alice in Wonderland, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, The Little Mermaid, and The Rescuers. It was fun to visit the worlds of some of the less-retold stories. I was especially excited for Chernabog’s story and getting to know a little about him.
The book starts off as a collection of tales featuring Disney characters, settings, and stories. From there, we are introduced to Billie and Tim, two teens exploring the Disney Archives. After a few stories, they are pulled into the Disney movies and must find their way back to the real world. I will say, by the end, the story was more interesting to me. But it was kind of odd to start with standalone stories then jump into connected ones. It was a weird flow and felt disjointed.
I don’t think the tagline does this book any favors. Most of them aren’t actually scary stories. They are more adventure stories, sometimes with spooky elements. Besides the Headless Horseman and the Huntsman, I wouldn’t really call any of them scary stories. There are elements of danger, graveyards, dark forests, hungry wolves, and sea witches, but the stories aren’t written to scare.
Despite all that, the illustrations in this are absolutely stunning. I loved the visuals. They perfectly deliver on the darkness of the concept.
I really wanted to love this book. I adore retellings, especially those dark in nature. But I didn’t really connect with the characters or the writing. This is a solid 2-star book for the writing, but the visuals were absolute perfection so it gets a bonus star just for that. The stories were alright, but I wanted to finish this solely to talk about the artwork.
An okay read, but highly recommend perusing it to take in all of Larson’s fantastically spooky art.