Somewhere in the world there is a book that will teach you very bad things. You say you don't want a book like that? But someday you will. I know you will.

A Bad Book has a story by Miyuki Miyabe and art by Hisanori Yoshida. English translation is done by Jim Hubbert. Published by Viz Media (October 20, 2026).

Rebecca Silverman
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It is one of the oddities of American picture book publishing that many publishers prefer authors not to turn in their manuscripts with illustrations. This enables publishers to use their own house illustrators or to find one that they like, and historically that has resulted in many a picture book being published where author and artist never really had much, if any, contact. I can't prove that this is why the Walter the Farting Dog series has the most nightmare-inducing illustrations I've ever seen (that don't suit the text at all), but there's a good chance that it is.

This is a long introduction to say that it feels a bit like Miyuki Miyabe's A Bad Book is a casualty of a similar situation. While it almost certainly is not – Japanese publishers aren't like American ones in this regard – I don't think that Hisanori Yoshida's art quite fits with Miyabe's text. It's got a Wyeth-esque unsettling quality that makes it excellent art in its own right – there's even a page that looks like it could be a reimagining of Christina's World from a different angle – the story told in the pictures doesn't entirely line up with the one told by the words.

Miyabe's story is about a self-proclaimed “bad” book. Speaking directly to the reader (which is quite effective), it describes how it contains all bad things, how it can teach you how to hurt and kill and do other unsavory things should you want to know. And if you don't want to hurt people now, the book assures you, it will be right here, waiting for you when you do. And someday you will want to take the book up on its offer. It's remarkably effective, understated horror, unsettling and eerie, because even a small child knows that there are bad books like that out there…and that some people agree to open them.

On the other hand, Yoshida's story is about a little blonde girl who leaves her toys in the house and goes outside, across the fields and into the forest. There she finds the toys she left behind in her room, some strung up on tree branches, one torn and teeming with ants. Her large teddy bear, now grown to monstrous proportions, lurks in the trees, freed from the confines of her cozy rocking chair. It's equally as unsettling as Miyabe's text, and while it can be read as the toys having opened the book, it doesn't quite work. There's definitely something to be said for a picture book that can be interpreted as having two entirely separate stories, though, so know your little reader and act accordingly…which might mean slotting this into the “not for kids” subset of picture books.

Kevin Cormack
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Of the three “Horror Picture Books” presented by Viz for this guide, this is the one I like least. I'm unsure, for one, of who this is supposed to be aimed at. As a picture book, the emphasis is, of course, on the art. However, I would usually expect there to be some kind of thematic link between the words and the art, and, I may be exposing how dumb I am here, but there seems to be none. It's also the most terse of all three volumes, with very few words stretched across the minimal page count.

There's no “story,” merely what may as well be a tone poem about a person being addressed by what seems to be a sentient book enticing them to do… bad things? Anyway, the almost completely disconnected imagery is of a little girl wandering a large house, and then the nearby forest, while weird toys glare at her. Now, some folks find certain kids' toys unsettling. That's why there's an entire Child's Play movie franchise that made the doll Chucky something of a cult star. I am not one of these people.

Depicted on these pages are some pretty normal-looking teddy bears, Matryoshka dolls, an admittedly unsettling Nutcracker soldier, and a few others. Few of the images, while they are certainly painted attractively, appear at all scary or disturbing. An image of a toy pulled apart, its stuffing leaking and ants crawling across it isn't particularly disturbing. Even the final “gotcha” image is underwhelming.

As there's no story, there's nothing to capture a child's interest. The images aren't particularly enticing either. For horror-devouring adults, keen to purchase a book filled with unsettling imagery, that's lacking here too. Even for those looking for the amusement that comes with a book packaged like a children's story but filled with ironically inappropriate material won't find that here. So I ask again, who is this for?

Bolts
Rating:

I like the idea of this book. This is a self-proclaimed “bad book" that considers itself a necessity. There's no actual story. The book literally is communicating to the reader that it is bad and that there will eventually come a time when the reader will need to seek it out. The book slowly builds and plays on that idea of people needing a terrible outlet. One day you might come across somebody you don't like, and you want to do bad things, so you'll turn to the bad book to help make those dark thoughts a reality. There is a disturbing level of confidence here that makes my skin crawl in a good way.

My problem with the book is that the visual presentation makes the intentions less clear. The narration feels ethereal, like the book itself is talking to me, but visually, there is a stuffed bear almost always in frame throughout the book, as if it is the thing that is talking to me. While the narration is very creepy, the actual visuals of the book seem to be showcasing a bunch of small creepy toys going after a little girl. I'm not sure what the correlation is between this being a bad book that reveals things that you can never unsee and seemingly evil toys torturing somebody. If there was an actual connection between what is being said and what is being shown, then this book would be a lot stronger to recommend. Otherwise, it feels like there are two ideas at odds with each other, which makes this a lot harder to recommend as either a learning experience or cautionary tale.