The Headless Horseman and Other Ghoulish Tales

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.