CM Magazine: What There Is Before There Is Anything There. (A Scary Story).

________________ CM . . . . Volume XXI Number 1. . . .September 5, 2014

cover
What There Is Before There Is Anything There. (A Scary Story).

Liniers. Translated by Elisa Amado.
Toronto, ON: Groundwood Books/House of Anansi Press, 2014.
24 pp., hardcover, $18.95.
ISBN 978-1-55498-385-8.

Preschool-grade 2 / Ages 4-7.

Review by Lian Beveridge.

*** /4

excerpt:

He starts to feel scared because he knows what is coming next. It comes every night when the ceiling disappears. It is dark and shapeless. Blacker than blackest darkness.

Liniers� picturebook What There Is Before There Is Anything There is exactly what the subtitle promises: a scary story. A little boy�s parents put him to bed, switch off the light and leave. Soon silent creatures float down from the �black and infinite� hole where the ceiling used to be; then a creepy nameless blob appears and says, �I am what there is before there is anything there.� The boy seeks refuge in his parents� bed, but the same ominous figures begin to appear.

internal art      Liniers is a very successful Argentinean illustrator. I like his use of cross-hatching for the darkness and for the scary existential horror. His muddy colour palette creates a sombre mood. His short sentences and clipped scansion also create a tense feeling of suspense. For instance, as he describes the floating figures, Liniers writes, �They don�t say anything. They just stare. At him.� All of the elements of the text work well together to create a truly scary story. As his author biography explains, the original Spanish edition of this picturebook has won prizes including the Premio ALIJA (IBBY Argentina� and the Premio CAP (Camara Argentina de Publicaciones), and �it was selected for Mexico�s national reading program.�

      The book�s quirky illustrations and text would be appealing to creative children. The boy�s mother explains that �it�s just your imagination. Sometimes you make things up. It�s good to be able to make things up.� The silent creatures which float down from the sky are grotesque in a cartoonish way. They wear silly hats and have pointy noses. They are not nearly as scary as the nameless blob. The boy�s imagination brings both good and bad experiences into his life.

      The blurb on the English edition suggests that the book �will resonate deeply with young children who are afraid of the dark.� However, the book offers no way to deal with these fears. In fact, it takes away one of the few successful tools a child has� it�s not even safe in your parents� bed. I would not use this book for bibliotherapeutic purposes. I can imagine it making night time fears that much worse. However, I was the kind of child who was scared of the dark and would have been scared of this book. In fact, I still get nightmares from scary books! However, I understand that many other people love scaring themselves, and they would appreciate this text in a way I can�t.

     I would recommend What There Is Before There Is Anything There for children who like scaring themselves, the kind of kid who sees this spooky cover and the words, �A scary story�, and gets a little thrill.

Recommended.

Lian Beveridge is an independent scholar based in Vancouver, BC. Her primary research interests are children�s literature (especially picturebooks) and queer theory.

To comment on this title or this review, send mail to cm@umanitoba.ca.

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ISSN 1201-9364 Hosted by the University of Manitoba.