Strollerderby

 The press materials for The Girl In the Castle Inside the Museum predictably describe the book as “whimsical.” But there’s a dark side to whimsy, a Roald Dahl/Neil Gaiman/Tim Burton side that kids and adults alike are drawn towards. That’s what The Girl Inside... so effectively captures, thanks to Nicole Ceccoli’s incredible illustrations.

Ceccoli is an Italian painter whose work often depicts haunting, vaguely menacing childlike worlds. (Mark Ryden and Eva Montanari are other artists in this vein.) For The Girl Inside…, about a tiny girl who lives inside a museum exhibit, Ceccoli creates a fantasy museum of Escher-like labyrinths, clockwork birds, Victorian doll-fairies, and ephemera floating through the air like dust mites. The story is open-ended and mysterious: we never learn how the girl came to live in the museum, only that she’s lonely and needs the reader’s friendship.  If the reader is a child who’s spellbound by detailed illustrations, he won’t mind returning her feelings.  — Gwynne Watkins

Book of the Week appears every other Friday. Sometimes every Friday. We’re fickle like that.