Washington Irving's classic American scare tale combines satire, horror, and farce, and in a memorable rendition well timed for Halloween, Grimly's darkly comic drawings draw forth all of these elements. As in his Edgar Allan Poe's Tales of Mystery and Madness (2004), the artwork unfolds in sepia-toned panels and vignettes that show Grimly's inspirations in early American comics. True to the source, the Horseman episode passes rather swiftly; most of the emphasis is on ridiculous Ichabod Crane, like "some scarecrow eloped from a cornfield," captured here in all of his gangly absurdity. Readers craving serious gooseflesh may find this less horrific than they expected, but the humor they discover, effectively interpreted by Grimly, is likely a worthwhile trade. Teachers wanting to share Irving's work aloud will welcome the gently abridged text, even if the small panels won't show well to a crowd; Grimly's arch, gothic sensibility, akin to that of Tim Burton and Edward Gorey, will even attract some high-school readers.

by McKay. The text is the original; the illustrations are pure Rackham - with some of the most menacing and expressive trees the master ever drew.

Abridged but not rewritten, the classic tale is decorated with a plethora of very small, comically gothic cartoons that add an air of spooky grotesquerie. An overall color scheme of pale browns and oranges adds a properly autumnal air to Sleepy Hollow's knobby woodlands, and the supporting cast includes nearly as many ghosts, toothy imps and the like as it does human figures. Grimly's not much for verisimilitude—party guests at the Van Tassels include African-Americans, and there's a glimpse of a generic Native American earlier on—but burly "rantipole hero" Brom Bones looks rightly massive next to the exaggeratedly gawky figure of Ichabod Crane. The Headless Horseman not only sports a particularly eerie-looking twig between its shoulders but rides a red-eyed, demonic steed, and in three views on the final page the decayed schoolhouse has a decidedly haunted air. Still, this is not a particularly scary rendition, and because its text is chopped into scattered, easily digestible passages tucked between or inside the panels, it may have more appeal to less-able readers than full versions. (Fantasy. 10-12)

THE LEGEND OF SLEEPY HOLLOW Washington Irving, illus. by Michael Garland. Boyds Mills, $8.95 ISBN 1-56397-605-6. Full-page oil paintings illustrate this unabridged edition of the classic spine-tingler. All ages. (Sept.)