You went to live with Grandma in her rambling old house. High above the rafters is a world of darkness. You can't shake the feeling that something is lurking there.

Is It There or Not? has a story by Natsuhiko Kyōgoku and art by Naoko Machida. English translation is done by Jim Hubbert. Published by Viz Media (October 20, 2026).

Rebecca Silverman
Rating:

The most understated of Viz's inaugural three horror picture books, Is It There or Not is my favorite. It's not visceral like Looking at Me or unsettling like A Bad Book. Instead, Is It There or Not plays on the basic fears that stalk our childhoods – the dark, the hidden, and the things that might or might not be present. The protagonist is a child who suddenly has to live with his grandmother (we're never told why) in her old, traditional wooden house. The grandmother, who is old enough to have shrunken down to her grandson's approximate size, is aware of the creepy nature of her high-ceilinged home, and the only advice she has to offer to her grandchild when he thinks he sees something up near the ceiling window is to tell him not to look.

Because, she says, if you don't look, you won't know if it's there or not.

The words are meant to be reassuring, but they show a total lack of understanding about what might actually terrify a child. It's the not knowing that's a problem, because when you don't know, that's when the monsters come out to get you. If you ever spent hours squinting into the shadows to make sure that there really isn't a child-eating fiend there, certain that if you look away it will attack, you'll empathize with the protagonist.

That also makes this the horror picture book I'd most unreservedly recommend for picture book age readers, although as with the other two, you absolutely want to know what your child can handle before turning them loose with this. But alongside the more recognizably childlike sense of fear present in the writing, the illustrations also do a remarkable job of being child-friendly. The protagonist's grandmother keeps cats, and lots of them, and each picture involves multiple cats throughout, some in plain sight, and others more hidden. It allows for the sort of active reading that's both fun and beneficial, and as a bonus, it can function as a way for timid readers to distract themselves. Why focus on the scary when you can be looking for the kitties?

Is It There or Not is still an unsettling book. It definitely deserves the genre marker of “horror,” and the last page, showing what might be there, is genuinely creepy. But it straddles the line of too scary and just scary enough very well, whether you're an older reader or a young one.

Kevin Cormack
Rating:

As a kid, I had a few horror-themed picture or pop-up books, some of which were filled with such potent imagery that I can still recall entire pages in my mind's eye even now, decades later. I suspect this range of “Horror Picture Books” from Viz is designed to capitalize on the nostalgia for such books. This is a reasonable stab at inducing a sense of powerless dread, but I feel it's lacking something, both as a children's book and as a book aimed at adults looking to evoke something akin to memories of their childhood.

I certainly can't fault the art. Machida's moody interiors and ubiquitous lithe cats are certainly attractive. I particularly like one particular image of a cat being held by the narrator's grandmother, a baleful expression upon its face. Machida pays particular attention to the way children perceive space, with ceilings towering high above. Everything seems so much bigger when you're a kid.

The particular kid in question goes to live in Grandma's dark house with her. Is there a reason for this? Some tragedy, perhaps? We're left to fill in the blanks. The child constantly frets about something watching above, from the rafters. Of course, their concerns are either dismissed or diminished by Grandma. Adults often misunderstand or refuse to acknowledge the concerns of children. Sometimes adults also willingly ignore things that kids cannot.

Is it There or Not does quite effectively capitalize on that feeling of powerlessness when, as a child, you can sense something is wrong, and the adults around you either don't believe you or don't care. It's very short, though, and not quite what I'd call “scary”. The final image is vaguely unsettling, I suppose, and could be enough to give a more sensitive child nightmares. Overall, I'm a bit underwhelmed by this, and I couldn't be convinced to pay full price for such a slight book.

Bolts
Rating:

Everyone is afraid of the unknown. There are things around us that are literally and figuratively just out of reach that always keep us curious. What's behind that door that we're not allowed to open? What's in the forest that we're not allowed to explore? What's happening in the deepest parts of the water that we can't reach? Is It There Or Not? is a very simple story that leans into that idea at first, being about a young boy who is curious about the dark rafters of his grandma's house that he can't reach. But then the story quickly shifts into harnessing a very different but relatable fear: what happens if you see something but you still can't do anything about it?

I love how this book is able to completely harness that sense of anxiety. There are some people who don't mind living with the unknown as long as it doesn't bother them. I definitely am not one of those people so I related much more to the main character of this story that unfortunately has to live with that fear of something being so close yet so far away. The art is absolutely gorgeous with this watercolor aesthetic, and I love how close to the chest the presentation is, not revealing anything until the very last page. This is a really simple and effective story for generating that anxiety to the point where I worry that it might stick with you for a while after finishing, regardless of whether you're a child or an adult.