The Ghosts of Luckless Gulch

A tall tale full of fun exaggeration treated as true, from the fiery trails that speedy Estella leaves in her wake when she runs, to the fantastical animals that come to her for care, to the (so creatively!) frozen town of Luckless Gulch. When Estella's rock-breaking and -eating pets are stolen, she races all over pancake-flat California asking Gold Rush hopefuls for news. She hears of a mysterious frozen town greedy dead prospectors have frozen the land so they can dig in the dark they prefer...and what does an incorporeal ghost miner need but some rock-breaking animals to help? Good thing they don't call her Estella corriente, the running star, for nothing! Still, the angry ghosts creat enough of a ruckus to throw up quite a few hills show more and shake the ground from time to time.

Lots of fun, but picture book for an older audience--there's quite a bit of text on each page and the parts where Estella meets her three pets and where a miner tells her the stories of three starving prospectors slow down the pace a bit.

I also loved the whitewood-to-redwood detail (the white trees got sunburned when the hills put them too close to the sun), but couldn't fit it in here since it was kind of just a side note in the story. show less

Anne Isaacs is unusually talented as a writer of tall tales. I loved both of the Swamp Angel stories, and now I loved this one. I was impressed by Dan Santat's illustrations too. This is the first Isaac story I've read with Santat illustrating and he's every bit as good. I liked the ghosts in this story as well. They were quite a bit more entertaining than the previous villains of her books.

Ages 6 and Up. “The Ghosts of Luckless Gulch” is an original tall tale about a girl name Estrella Rivers who became “the blazing hero of the California Gold Rush.” Estrella can run so fast she leaves a trail of flames behind her and is a natural-born animal healer. One day her three pets – a lamb-like creature with an elephants strength called a Kickle Snifter, a horse with downhill legs twice as long as his uphill legs called a Sidehill Wowser, and a bouncing Rubberado puppy named Comet – are stolen and Estrella crosses the border of Gold Country to find them. There she meets down-and-out prospectors and discovers a town called Luckless Gulch which has been frozen by ghosts. In tall tale fashion, the story explains how show more California got mountains and how the Redwoods became red.
This picture book is very text-heavy, but it amounts to a very fun story. The illustrations are done in acrylic and ink on Bristol paper and touched up in Adobe Photoshop and are beautiful with well-drawn characters and rich colors. Recommended for all picture book collections. show less