The Tall Man

By Author / Illustrator

Mary Cathleen Brown

Genre

Supernatural

Age range(s)

11+

Publisher

Everything with Words

ISBN

9781911427391

Format

Paperback / softback

Published

06-06-2024

Synopsis

The village is alive with rumours about the Tall Man and Tom lives in his house. Tom hears a boy in the cellar offering a 'special' acorn to a rat, Captain Rat, whom he begs to find the key to his leg-iron. The cellar is empty but Tom knows that the boy is real and he's convinced that he is trapped in a brutal past and that the boy is the Tall's Man's prisoner. Each time Tom tries to help the boy, the Tall Man's ghostly presence intensifies. Who is the boy in the cellar, and can they escape Tall Man?

Reviews

Tom moves to a new home with his mother to get away from an ended relationship. They move into an almost derelict old house, known as the Tall Man's house. Starting a new school adds to the complications as Tom finds it difficult to fit in and the bullies come out of the woodwork to torment him. Then Tom starts to see things and hearing things in the house. Are they ghosts or echoes from the past? Is there really a boy locked in the cellar?

I have to confess to hating scary stories and finding they haunt you when you pause reading them. I found this book terrifying, but so beautifully written and compelling, I had to know what was going to happen. The quote on the front cover from Phil Hickes (another writer of scary stories) entirely sums it up. "A scary mystery that keeps the reader gripped".

The Tall Man is much more than a haunted mystery, though. It deals with a mother who is clearly depressed and leaving an abusive relationship, as well as bullies who are entirely believable. The book has a striking cover by Holy Ovenden, but also internal illustrations by Ewa Beniak-Haremska, which lend a particularly terrifying edge to the book. Sometimes they are cobwebs strewn across the page and at other times shadows of the tell man himself. They make the whole thing incredibly atmospheric.

I’ve put this book as an 11+ and some children may enjoy a delicious chill. Others, however, may find this just too frightening - as I did!

324 pages / Reviewed by Jacqueline Harris, teacher