Otilla ran away from home. She runs deep into the snow-blanketed forest. Eventually, she finds a very large house. Inside the house is a skull. He lets Otilla in.
Otilla and the skull become fast friends. She helps the skull with things that have become difficult for him, like eating fruit or having tea by the fireside. Otilla doesn’t want to return to wherever she came from; she wants to stay. The skull lets her, but he warns her of the headless skeleton that comes every night looking for him. If the skeleton manages to catch the skull, it will probably go very badly for him.
And so Otilla decides to help her new friend.
The Skull by Jon Klassen is just a deliciously dark delight of a book. The illustrations are, of course, centerpiece, stunning in their stark simplicity, and the muted palette paints a gloriously gloomy but still inviting, comfortable atmosphere. It’s bewitching, in the very best sense of the word. Klassen’s trademark deadpan humor is also very much present, making for some great page turns that genuinely made me laugh out loud.
Really enjoyed the writing, as well. Lyrical, eerie, economical. Like all the best fairy tales, what we are given is only pure story, with not a single word wasted. It makes for a perfect companion to the wistful, dusky artwork.
The Skull, as the subtitle declares, is a retelling of an old Tyrolean folktale. In a particularly fascinating author’s note, Klassen recalls randomly coming across it in a library in Alaska some time ago. The story with him, but when, some years later, with the help of some librarians, he managed to get his hands on it again, he found that the original story wasn’t the one he had been thinking about for so long. Or rather, it was, but it had changed over time, his mind subconsciously transforming it into the version we find in this book. Which, he goes on to write, is how fairy tales evolved in the first palace. Originating as oral tradition meant that these stories were reimagined, in some way, every time they were retold, shaped and altered by the storyteller’s emotions and experiences. Klassen concludes by wishing the same thing happens to his interpretation down the line, which is really what every writer hopes for, deep down.
A lovely, slightly macabre tale of friendship and affection. I loved everything about this weird little story.
ricardo reading 