cover image The Headless Horseman and Other Ghoulish Tales

The Headless Horseman and Other Ghoulish Tales

Maggie Pearson. Crocodile Books, $18.95 (96pp) ISBN 978-1-56656-377-2

Maggie Pearson retells 14 stories from around the world in The Headless Horseman and Other Ghoulish Tales, illus. by Gavin Rowe, including ""The Brave Little Tailor,"" based on a Celtic ghost story (which also inspired Janice del Negro's recent Lucy Dove, illus. by Leonid Gore); ""The Headless Horseman"" (an adaptation of Washington Irving's The Legend of Sleepy Hollow); and ""Bluebeard,"" the French legend of the man who killed his wives in a secret room of his home. Oddly, Pearson offers no bibliography to credit the original sources for her tales (Washington Irving's name is mentioned nowhere, for instance). Full-bleed watercolors and spot vignettes play up the haunting nature of the tales.