P.T.A. Night

By Rebecca Buchanan
January 11, 2010

Title: P.T.A. Night
Publisher: Silverline Books
Creator: Jeremy R Scott
Price: $12.99
ISBN: 978-1-60706-163-2

It's PTA night at the Austintown Middle School. While parents and teachers gather, a maintenance man out front paints the school sign. In the basement, two of his co-workers tackle a game of checkers, while across the hall the school chef whips up a new stew. Upstairs a science teacher and his star pupil launch an ambitious experiment while in the bell tower above, a ghostly resident opens up one his favorite books ....

As you can tell by the presence of the ghost, all is not as it seems at Austintown Middle School. Things are far, far from normal. That ambitious science experiment? Well, it works, and a fanged, drooling alien descends upon the school. The chef? Her new stew sprouts tentacles. The maintenance guy out front? Werewolf. The PTA meeting? Called because it turns out that the school was built on cursed burial grounds, and they need to quietly get rid of the coffins. The dead have other plans, however ....

P.T.A. Night is a great, wordless adventure. Readers will be pulled right in as the story unfolds in bold, two-page cutaways. The ghost in his tower, the science experiment, the PTA meeting, the guys in the basement: it's all visible simultaneously. It's great to watch the different bits of the story develop independently, and then all converge together at the end. Readers can pause and study each page in detail (pay attention to the PTA agenda).

Highly recommended to young readers (who will have fun inventing their own dialogue), as well as fans of The ABC's of Superpowers, Glister, and Korgi.

Silverline Books
PTA Night Homepage