Anyone remember The Tailypo A Ghost Story by the Galdons?
Well, there was another book, very similar, both in story and in illustrations, it was maybe 30 or 40 pages long; a picture book for slightly older children. I lost it when I was 6 years old, meaning it was published prior to 1979.
The story started out with a boy walking in the woods, when he sees a hand floating by. He runs after it, going deeper into the woods. Soon he hears a woman screaming “My hand! My hand! Has any one seen my hand?” He takes the hand too her. From there the story is like a very gruesome version of Hansel and Gretal.
The ghost captures the boy and takes him to a house built out of bones, held together with blood. She ends up feeding him to her pet wolf. The boy spends a few days inside the wolf (very gruesome illustrations, done in black and white pen and ink), watching tv (the wolf eat a TV too).
Some how the boy escapes but I forget the rest of the book.
The illustrations in the book were a style very similar to the Galdons. They were drawn in black ink and charcoal and had a quick cross-hatch style. The only colors in the book were a few random touches of turquoise blue and bright red.
The cover on the edition I had (and probably the only edition ever made) was pitch black, with turquoise skeletal looking spooky trees, it looked as though you were looking down into the forest.
The book, as I recall (I was only 4 when I got it) though it was sold for ages 5 – 8 ,caused quite a stir when it was published, due to it’s extremely graphic YA nature and my understanding was that due to parent protests, book stores sent it back to the publisher and nearly every copy of it was shredded, resulting in it becoming one of the rarest books to exist.
It was my favorite book, along with The Tailypo (yes, I was a morbid child, Vincent Price was my fave actor when I was 2 – drove my parents crazy with my abnormally early obsession with horror genre.) I do not know what happened to my copy of this book. All I know is one day I came home from school and it was gone, never to be seen again, it was a common occurance for my books to be thrown into the woodstove whenever my parents got angry with me, and I assume that was the fate that befell my beloved “Book of the Bones” as I referred to it, and I’ve spent 30 years trying to find another copy of it. The problem is I know neither the name nor the author of this strange gruesome picture book.
I’ve been putting this request all over the internet since 1997, every year I leave this request on this NaNoWriMo Thread, and to date, no one has been able to help me. No one can remember this super rare book.
If any one remembers this book and knows either the title and/or author PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE let me know! NaNoMail me if you have any info about this book. Thank you!
All Hail Bela Lugosi!
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