This manga proves that Halloween-type stories don't have to be scary. While the story has its share of witches, bats, and darkness (and even stars a girl who carries a casket everywhere she goes), the whole actually comes off as quirky and is perfectly safe for younger readers. Lacking gore and violence, it instead revels in being very, very odd. The star, Kuro, is a girl dressed completely in black, with big eyes and even bigger glasses, and is in search of a specific witch. On her travels, she has adventures involving everything from messages in bottles to dangerous princesses. Each episode feels different, but common threads weave their way through to pull everything together. Much as the story is unusual, the art is also very uncommon for manga, blocked with panels instead of overlapping pictures and changing proportions. Another idiosyncrasy is the fact that pages switch back and forth from black-and-white to color spreads, giving extra depth to the drawings. Kuro is a very unusual story, and therein lies its strength to entertain.

Gr 6 Up-Using the traditional yonkoma (four-panel) style of Japanese comic strips, Kiyuduki weaves an offbeat yarn of a girl in search ofsomething. Accompanied by her bat Sen and her catgirl sidekicks Nikuju and Sanju, tomboyish Kuro rambles across a gothic, turn-of-the-century European landscape meeting other outcasts and eccentrics. However, it slowly becomes clear that her journey is no lighthearted stroll; a chance encounter with another young girl in an abandoned village has irrevocably altered Kuros fateand the coffin she shoulders will likely be her own unless she can somehow remove the curse she now carries. Despite its dark and ominous undertone, the book is humorous, and the narrative is loosely plotted and moves at a leisurely comic-strip pace. Much like the plot, the attractive artwork succeeds in being both cute and eerie at the same time. The book is sure to please both horror readers and fans of dark comedy. Dave Inabnitt, Brooklyn Public Library, NY