Book Review: Through The Woods by Emily Carroll
October 14, 2020
In college I took a course called The History of Comic Books which I was rather reluctant to do because I was thinking it would be nerdy, but better than learning about ancient vases from Mayan ruins for an entire semester, and hey, I love the current super heroes! It couldn’t be that bad. It was one of my favorite art courses I took overall. I loved learning about where all theses characters came from, and even more so, learning that there as a whole world of books and art that I was neglecting: Graphic Novels. I had gone through a, very short, manga phase in middle school because a friend of mine had suggested reading a series she was interested in, but stopped simply because the library had only through a certain book in the series. This had made me believe that all graphic novels were manga and manga were all graphic novels. It wasn’t until this course that I found out that there was a whole world of books I was missing out on.
Through the Woods is a collection of short horror stories that revolve around the woods, and I am not a super big fan of the horror genre, but figured I would give it a go. I had seen pages of illustration on Goodreads and Pinterest and was already fully convinced that even if I didn’t like the stories, I would like the illustrations. I wasn’t wrong. This book was beautifully illustrated with very minimal colors and shades. I love when books do this – it forces the artist to be creative with the box that they are put in. It is an excellent way of showing significance to words, to objects, to scenes. They were chilling and lovely.
On Goodreads (the app I use to find new books, to see what friends are reading and to track my own reading) there are numerous reviews saying that the reader was chilled to the bone and that they were going to have nightmares from reading these short stories. I could not agree less. It is categorized as a teen book, and maybe had I read it as a teen I would feel the same, but none of these even gave me chills. All of the short stories were left on a bit of a cliff hanger in order for your mind to fill in the cracks with whatever you found the most scary outcome to be which is a really great way of freaking the audience out without having to do any resolution of your own. I am all for it. But it worked opposite for me. I was not more afraid, but less. They seemed to fall flat in my mind.
I would suggest this book if only for the illustrations. If you are easily spooked this will be a chilling little Halloween read, but if you are used to seeing scary movies and going to haunted houses this may be a little soft for you. Either way, I did enjoy this read.
