The Bora Boys and the Last Big Door 
By Michael J. Feeney
Illustrated by John Devaney

      The Bora Boys and the Last Big Door has several things going for it. The main characters are kids. There’s a friendly ghost who takes the children on adventures. The book has brightly colored illustrations and a full-color book jacket over a full-color cover. The text is remarkably error free; clearly the author went to the trouble of using a good proofreader. Part of the proceeds from the books go to charity.

      The book also suffers from a few problems. It’s very, very long. Long picture storybooks usually target second or third grade children, since a book this long is challenging to read aloud. Unfortunately, the two main characters here are a preschooler and a young toddler, making this a preschool book. I read the book aloud to my kindergarten-aged daughter and frequently had to stop and explain figures of speech that were too mature for her. And she grew bored with the meandering plot. This is the first in a series of books featuring these characters and I hope the author finds a good critique group to help him with the rest in the series, since he’s got terrific potential.

    The book would also be helped visually by a professional typesetter and a professional illustrator instead of a fine artist. The artwork is lively, but uses different media and very different interpretations of the characters from one page to the next; in one illustration the mother has wavy hair, in the next (a moment later) her hair is very straight. The young toddler doesn't look like the same child in any two illustrations. This gives the book a disjointed look and is confusing to young readers. (In one double-page spread, the left-hand illustration was watercolor and the right was a very loose pen and ink; my daughter thought someone had scribbled in the book!)

    But despite the problems, The Bora Boys and the Last Big Door is an unusual and promising self-published book. It will be well worth watching to see what this author does with the rest of the series.