Through the Woods: Stories

by Emily Carroll

Overview

Eisner Award Winner: “A graphic debut that blends the gothic strangeness of Tim Burton with the macabre illustrations of Edward Gorey . . . wonderfully chilling.” —Financial Times

Journey through the woods in this sinister, compellingly spooky collection that features four brand-new stories and one phenomenally popular tale. These are fairy tales gone seriously wrong, where you can travel to “Our Neighbor’s House” —though coming back might be a problem. Or find yourself a young bride in a house that holds a terrible secret in “A Lady’s Hands Are Cold.” You might try to figure out what is haunting “My Friend Janna,” or discover that your brother’s fiancée may not be what she seems in “The Nesting Place.” And of course, you must revisit the horror of the breakout webcomic hit “His Face All Red.”

“Eerie illustrations . . . masterfully build terrifying tension.” —Booklist (starred review)

“Through the Woods is, in every sense of the word, thrilling.” —The New York Times Book Review

“Beautifully rendered . . . A delight for Edgar Allan Poe and Alvin Schwartz enthusiasts.” —School Library Journal (starred review)

“Carroll makes the woods of the title entirely her own, a metaphor for the danger that lurks and snarls outside the door, but which entices us outside, nevertheless.” —Globe and Mail

“Brilliant.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781442465978
Publisher:	Simon & Schuster
Publication date:	02/13/2024
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	208
Sales rank:	387,113
Lexile:	GN550L (what's this?)
File size:	62 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.
Age Range:	14 - 17 Years

About the Author

Emily Carroll was born in London, Ontario, in June of 1983. In addition to the many short online comics found at her website, her work has been featured in numerous print anthologies. She currently lives with her wife Kate and their large orange cat in Stratford, Ontario.

Editorial Reviews

…too disturbing and frightening to help an 8-year-old understand her internal world. A 13-year-old reader, though, or a 60-year-old reader for that matter, will be richly rewarded. And richly terrified. Carroll knows how to capture uncomfortable emotions—guilt, regret, possessiveness, envy—and transform them into hair-raising narratives…Through the Woods is packed with ideas and experiments. New artistic techniques unfurl as the terror mounts, stunning visuals splash across the panels. Carroll effectively paces each tale, and the collection as a whole. Through the Woods is, in every sense of the word, thrilling.

The New York Times Book Review - Adam Gidwitz

★ 07/21/2014
Canadian graphic artist Carroll uses familiar horror motifs—the first wife's ghost, the monster that dwells in the forest—to create fresh and disturbing tales. Sure in her handling of line, color, and sequential art techniques, she revels in period settings, placing her five stories in identifiable historical eras that include colonial North America and the Roaring Twenties. Carefully drawn clothing and furnishings provide ironic backdrops for Lovecraftian revelations of parasitical possession and hideous evil. In the most explicitly gruesome story, a dowdy girl named Mabel is forced to stay with her prosperous brother and his perfect wife, who, Mabel begins to see, is a monster inhabiting the skin of a human: "I only wanted to wear her," the wife says dreamily of the housekeeper, whose bloodied wrist Mabel has spotted, "but when I tried her on, there was no stretch left." Instead of the gratifying defeat of evil, the gothic stories often leave off unsettlingly with a twist of the knife, just at the moment some fresh horror beckons. Ages 14–up. Agent: Jen Linnan, Linnan Literary Management. (July)

Publishers Weekly

"Emily Carroll's Through the Woods mesmerizes and inspires; a Victorian gothic playground haunted by Mary Shelley & Edward Gorey, awash in the dream-like haze of Odilon Redon, and composed with the poetic elegance of Ukiyo-e. I loved it."

Craig Thompson

"The whole book is magnificently executed… is all dextrous and varied and absolutely masterful… Carroll…lures us in only to do terrible, wonderful things to our heads and hearts.

NPR - Amal El-Mohtar

*"Bone rattling."

Starred Review Shelf Awareness

"Beautiful, beguiling, and thrillingly eerie."

Michael Faber

"This book is full of gorgeous, terrifying tales of mysterious wooded misadventures that creep right into your brain and seduce you."

Lucy Knisley

"Through the Woods will dazzle you, seduce you, amaze you, delight and frighten and enchant you. What a talent. What a voice."

Mark Siegel

"Through the Woods is an uncanny wonder. This haunting collection of visual stories, part Stephen King and part Edgar Allen Poe, is a special kind of quiet horror."

John Hendrix

"Through the Woods is a triumph, it's gorgeous, soft and bright, and it is dark, earthy and spin-chilling. [Emily Carroll] should be recognized as one of the best graphic storytellers out there."

Kate Beaton

"Oh holy hell—Emily Carroll's horror comic collection Through The Woods is so freaking spooky... Each little horror comic is so creepy and absolutely gorgeous.... So turn off all the lights and curl up for a good chill."

i09

*"It is [Carroll’s] eerie illustrations—popping with bold color on black, glossy pages—that masterfully build terrifying tension and a keep-the-lights-on atmosphere."

starred review Booklist

"Stunning, magical. Hauntingly gothic...[Through the Woods] made me feel like a child again, reading grim fairy tales."

Jane Harris

"Canadian comics writer Emily Carroll has produced a graphic debut that blends the gothic strangeness of Tim Burton with the macabre illustrations of Edward Gorey to create a wonderfully chilling collection of tales...Eschewing neat endings, Carroll leaves lingering questions: how much is real and how much imagination? Is the haunting just guilt, grief, loneliness, psychosis or something supernatural? Her eerie tales will haunt you."

Financial Times

"Carroll makes the woods of the title entirely her own, a metaphor for the danger that lurks and snarls outside the door, but which entices us outside, nevertheless."

Globe and Mail

"Through the Woods is, in every sense of the word, thrilling.

New York Times Book Review

"Canadian comics writer Emily Carroll has produced a graphic debut that blends the gothic strangeness of Tim Burton with the macabre illustrations of Edward Gorey to create a wonderfully chilling collection of tales...Eschewing neat endings, Carroll leaves lingering questions: how much is real and how much imagination? Is the haunting just guilt, grief, loneliness, psychosis or something supernatural? Her eerie tales will haunt you."

Financial Times

★ 07/01/2014
Gr 8 Up—Not exactly a book of fairy tales, these illustrated short stories are more a series of ruminations interwoven with dreams and fairy tales. Classic elements are here—there's a girl in a red hooded cloak, and a girl who wears a ribbon around her throat—but the entries expand and wander in different (and darker) directions. The illustrations (done in ink and graphite on Bristol board and then digitally colored) fill the entire page, so at first glance the work looks more like a picture book than a graphic novel. The hues are bold and striking, with the color red dominating the pages in the form of sunsets, flushed cheeks, bloodshot eyes, twisted word balloons, a deep crimson ruby, and even pools of blood. This collection contains four new stories and one ("His Face All Red") that was originally published as a webcomic on Carroll's website. This is a beautifully rendered but deeply chilling collection of vignettes that will be most appreciated by teens and adults who are fans of fairy tales, horror, and the things that hide in the dark. A delight for Edgar Allan Poe and Alvin Schwartz enthusiasts.—Andrea Lipinski, New York Public Library

School Library Journal

★ 2014-06-04
A print and Web comics artist offers five creep-out chillers (four new) with folk-tale motifs and thoroughly disquieting art.Well-placed lines of terse, hand-lettered commentary and dialogue reinforce narrative connections but are also as much visual elements as are the impenetrable shadows, grim figures, and stark, crimson highlights in Carroll’s inky pictures. Making expert use of silent sequences, sudden close-ups and other cinematic techniques to crank up the terror, the author opens and closes in a dimly lit bedroom (much like yours), bookending the five primary stories. In “Our Neighbor’s House,” a trio of sisters are taken one by one by a never-seen smiling man. In the next, a bride discovers that “A Lady’s Hands Are Cold”—as are the other pieces (seen in close, icky detail) of her husband’s dismembered but not entirely dead former wife. Two cases of supernatural possession (“His Face All Red” and “My Friend Janna”) follow. The collection is capped by a true screamer in which a teenager’s memories of her mother’s tales of a cellar-dwelling monster with a “sweet, wet voice” segue into a horrific revelation about her pretty new sister-in-law. Lonely houses, dark woods and wolves? Check. Spectral figures with blood-red innards? Check. Writhing tentacles bursting from suddenly inhuman mouths? Check!A sure winner for any reader with a yen to become permanently terrified. Brilliant. (Graphic horror. 13-18)

Kirkus Reviews