The Skull

 The Skull by Jon Klassen, 105 pgs. 

I love this author's work and illustrations and this book was really surprising. I grabbed it for my kid to check out, thinking we would read it together, but she ended up reading the whole thing all by herself and really liked it. It's a strange book and it doesn't quite end the way you imagine it will. In an author's note at the end of the book, Klassen writes that he was in a library in Alaska, waiting to give a speech and happened upon a book of Tyrolean folk tales and read quickly through one about a skull. The story stayed in the back of his mind for so long that when he finally decided to do something with it, he couldn't remember the title of the book or the story. He wrote to the librarians there, giving them what details he could recall and they found it for him easily ("Librarians are very good at that," he writes). Here, Otilla, the main character, finds a skull that wants to remain that way, instead of being reunited with its skeleton. Otilla helps out and makes a new friend in the process. It's a little dark and quirky but not at all frightening and would make a good addition to Halloween storytimes for older kids.