In the Shadows

February 24, 2014
Di Bartolo follows Lips Touch: Three Times—his acclaimed 2009 collaboration with his wife, Laini Taylor—with a project that gives him more scope for story. The creators are, in the main, handling separate narratives, with the possibility that some readers won’t recognize any connection until the end. Di Bartolo provides a horror-tinged adventure and White (Paranormalcy) a horror-tinged romance centering on Arthur, a mysterious young man who, in 1899, fetches up at the Johnson Boarding House with a heavy suitcase and heavier heart. He stays longer than planned, charmed by sisters Minnie and Cora Johnson. The arrival of two summer visitors precipitates a crisis that sends Arthur on a quest to lift the curse haunting him. Di Bartolo’s images are silent stills, occasionally suffering from a lack of pacing that dialogue would have provided. Likewise, the finely detailed, single-scene development of White’s text can be overshadowed by the instant impact of the pictures. For readers who can find their own balance between the two, it’s an intriguing, many-faceted tale. Ages 12–up. Agent: (for White) Michelle Wolfson, Wolfson Literary Agency; (for Di Bartolo) Jane Putch, Eyebait Management.

March 1, 2014
Teens square off against sinister immortals in an overstuffed muddle presented, Hugo Cabret-style, through an alternating mix of prose and wordless visuals. White's prose, created in collaboration with Di Bartolo, puts generic elements and character types together for a slow-moving tale featuring a set of bored undying. They have gathered in a small Maine town in 1900 to move the caged demon that keeps them alive to a new hidden location, in the process menacing a clutch of teenage residents. The creators offer no historical background or specific agenda for the bad guys, aside from just continuing to live. They are pursued across the decades by Arthur, dedicated to their destruction. Di Bartolo's wordless graphic panels chronicle that quest, which takes Arthur over continents and through the 20th century into the 21st. Readers are likely to find themselves more confused than enthralled. The graphic panels are interspersed in short, episodic sections from the very beginning so that readers will have no idea how they are connected to the text until links are supplied many pages later. Moreover, the art is drawn and colored in a loose, blurry way that makes recurring figures hard to recognize (Arthur has a facial scar, but that's no help since he doesn't acquire it until late in the prose story), and many discrete incidents are often so compressed that the graphic portion frequently feels more like a sketchy storyboard than a story. Ambitious but a failure both as a whole and in its parts. (Graphic/fantasy hybrid. 12-14)

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May 1, 2014

Gr 7 Up-In an inspired collaboration, White, author of urban fantasies and all things paranormal, pairs up with artist Di Bartolo to create a dark, moody, and mysterious hybrid novel. The story consists of alternating narratives, one in prose and one in vividly colored, sometimes horrific wordless graphic novel panels. It isn't immediately apparent if or how the two narrative threads are related. That fact alone might keep readers turning pages. White's story is about two sisters, Cora and Minnie, who live with their mother in a boardinghouse in Maine. After spying on the town witch and getting caught, Cora blames herself for the death of her father the next day. When a mysterious stranger, Arthur, comes to board, along with two brothers from New York, Minnie involves them in the folklore of their sleepy Maine resort town, only to discover that they are in an evil place, surrounded by watchers, and in more danger than she could have ever thought possible. What do you do when the web you weave ensnares not only the people you love, but the people and things you should fear the most? Di Bartolo's stunning artwork takes readers across the globe and spans from the turn of the 20th century to the present. While not for strictly linear thinkers, this absorbing tale will reward patient readers with a thrill of an adventure. Upon completion, teens will find themselves thumbing through it all over again, if only to put together the pieces of the puzzle that Di Bartolo keeps in the shadows throughout this eerie volume.-Meg Allison, The Moretown School, VT

Copyright 2014 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from May 1, 2014
Grades 9-12 *Starred Review* Maine. 1900. Five teens are living in a boardinghouse beneath a hill at the top of which stands a witch's home. Attracted one evening by the sound of music, the fiveThomas and his desperately ill brother, Charles; sisters Cora and Minnie, whose mother owns the boardinghouse; and mysterious Arthurarrive at the witch's abode. While peering in the windows, they see the witch wildly dance and thento their horrorhang herself. Running for help, they return with the deputy sheriff to find her gone. What has happened? Could it involve the three strangers who have come to their town: two menthe sinister Alden and his ominous, bearded companionand the elegant woman who accompanies them? What is Arthur's dark secret? And what on earth is the Ladon Vitae? These questions and more drive the tantalizing mystery that unfolds in two twinned stories: one told in the intriguing text by author White, and the second told in artist Di Bartolo's wordless, enigmatic images that are interspersed throughout the narrative. The result is an enthralling, page-turning gothic mystery infused with hair-raising horror. The well-written words harmonize perfectly with the lushly executed, haunting images that, at first, seem to have nothing to do with the textual story but are gradually revealed to be an integral part that, ultimately, brings light to the darkest of shadows.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)