The Dark-Thirty Book Review

What draws the eye to the few illustrations (there's one per story), are the unique way they are constructed. Save for the cover, above, each of the illustrations are in black and white. They look as if they were drawn on black scratchboard, which lends this ephemeral yet hard quality to the linework. What you'll see, then, is an illustration looking as if it was drawn in negative. They're all powerful images, and very strong ones that compliment the story. They are magnificent.

I won't go into an in depth review of each story, like I did in the Eerie Animals book, mostly because I believe this book is still in print (widely) so its easier to get a copy, and because these tales are really ones you have to read to really get a good feel for the life and times of these people that I can't possibly provide myself. I will, however, give you impressions of stories that stuck with me all these years.

"The Woman in the Snow" and "Boo Mama" both are quiet but heart-wrenching tales of mothers and children. The former tells of a mother ghost wandering in the snow, hoping for the compassionate hand of a bus driver after being denied a ride to the hospital in life but a calloused white driver. More than teaching lessons of racism and equality, "The Woman in the Snow" is most about compassion to a fellow man/woman, even if they are no longer in this world. Its a hard story to not feel anything by the end (and it always makes me a bit misty eyed).

"Boo Mama" is a unique tale that has elements of the otherworldly not in the form of ghosts or magic, but in cryptozoology. A mother loses her son in a forest, but months later he is recovered, unable to speak anything but an odd unknown language and no worse for the wear. But when the boy begins to exhibit odd behavior and transformations, his mother must make the hard choice between protecting and keeping the child she loves or letting him go where he can be safe. Its also a hard story to read, but its touching in its own way.