"A Very Chilling Mystery” - Independent Book Review
A creative and fun story that tests the limits of our imagination
What goes on in your refrigerator after you close it? As an adult, I can say that it’s crossed my mind a few times throughout my life. This is why I was so pleased to pick up Steve A. Erickson’s new children’s book A Very Chilling Mystery. In it, he pairs vivid and fun illustrations with a captivating take on what goes on behind the scenes in your fridge, and it’s nothing like you’d expect.
There’s a party going on in the fridge, and Erickson lets you in on it. It starts with an illustration of a little girl eyeing up the fridge from afar as the narrator invites us on a journey of confirmation that those delectables aren’t just lying around waiting to be enjoyed in there. Soon we’re taken through the shelves as foods and beverages go about their daily business, which includes things like playing baseball with a carrot bat, potatoes watching tv on a meatloaf couch, and beets rocking out on a drum set. In fact they’re doing everything but the nothing most people assume, and it’s awesome!
One of the coolest aspects of this book is that not only did Erickson write it, he also illustrated it. And the illustrations are what truly bring the book to life. As it takes place pre-dominantly in the fridge, readers can look forward to a colorful display of fruits, vegetables, leftover dinners, and mysterious forgotten foods on each page. The illustrations are so inviting and professional but also look as if they’ve been done with crayon or colored pencil, giving them a youthful touch that matches the reading level perfectly.
Children will enjoy Erickson’s rhythm and rhyme style of storytelling while adults will appreciate some of the more detailed aspects of the vegetable characters, like the half and half who can’t make up their mind or the beet who plays in a band called “The Beets,” written in the same font as “The Beatles.” I loved this story for many reasons, one being that I think it will spark an imaginative flame in young readers. If they’ve never considered what happens behind this closed door before, they definitely will now. They may even begin to question what goes on behind others and make up creative stories of their own to support their ideas. I’d recommend this book to most children and families who read together. I know I’ll be reading it to my own.
– Jaylynn Korrel, Independent Book Review (Source)