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The Book of Denial
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From award-winning Mexican author Ricardo Chávez Castañeda and the visionary Mexican designer Alejandro Magallanes comes a horror story and ghost story that is both daringly and beautifully told in word and image.
There are stories so terrible that we tremble to hear even a whisper of them. Even more terrible, some of them are true.This is one such story, a story of our deepest inhumanity-one that confronts the history of violence against children, and through its young narrator attempts to find a way out. A horror story and ghost story told as much through art as through text, The Book of Denial is an antidote to our collective silence. By uplifting storytelling as a means of understanding the past and shaping the future, it is also-improbably-a beacon of hope.
Written by genre-defying Mexican author Ricardo Chávez Castañeda, The Book of Denial is a dark and powerful story within a story, illustrated with a striking graphic sensibility by Alejandro Magallanes and translated by Lawrence Schimel.
This is the third book to appear under Unruly, an imprint of picture books for older readers, and will include a short note to readers about how it continues to build this experimental framework of visually complex, sophisticated picture books for teens and adults.
There are stories so terrible that we tremble to hear even a whisper of them. Even more terrible, some of them are true.This is one such story, a story of our deepest inhumanity-one that confronts the history of violence against children, and through its young narrator attempts to find a way out. A horror story and ghost story told as much through art as through text, The Book of Denial is an antidote to our collective silence. By uplifting storytelling as a means of understanding the past and shaping the future, it is also-improbably-a beacon of hope.
Written by genre-defying Mexican author Ricardo Chávez Castañeda, The Book of Denial is a dark and powerful story within a story, illustrated with a striking graphic sensibility by Alejandro Magallanes and translated by Lawrence Schimel.
This is the third book to appear under Unruly, an imprint of picture books for older readers, and will include a short note to readers about how it continues to build this experimental framework of visually complex, sophisticated picture books for teens and adults.
Praise for The Book of Denial
A Kirkus Reviews Best Book of the 21st Century (So Far)A Kirkus Reviews Best YA Book of 2024Selected for the USBBY Outstanding International Book List, 2025Selected for the 2025 Crawford Award Honour ListA 2025 Global Literature in Libraries Initiative Translated Young Adult Book Prize Honor BookA Children's Book Council (YA) January 2023 Hot Off the Press selection A Kirkus Reviews Best Book for Teens Out this WeekSTARRED REVIEW! ? “In this innovative work by noted Mexican creators that’s translated from Spanish, … the story propels readers inexorably toward its shocking climax. Striking black-and-white illustrations in a variety of styles, including photography and graphic design, frequently incorporate lines of text into the art and heighten the emotional impact. Unforgettable.”
Kirkus
RECOMMENDED WITH SPECIAL DISTINCTION! ? “By no means an easy read, this manages to be deeply insightful and endlessly horrifying… The startling black-and-white art of Magallanes’s illustrations adds an entirely new layer of gruesomeness, each page a unique and disturbing piece of art: a necktie made of a skeletal hand, a silhouette of a tumbling and mangled child, or a doll squeezed tightly by a shadowy hand.”
Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books
A Kirkus Reviews Best YA Book of 2024! “This import from Mexico is a startling, innovative tribute to what can be achieved when text, art, and graphic design come together to form something wholly original. Executed in black, white, and gray, this is the emotionally intense story of a boy who’s learning about—and grappling with—terrible, incomprehensibly violent events, and its surprise ending packs a punch.”
Kirkus Reviews’s "Best of 2024: Our Favorite YA Books"
A 2025 Bank Street College of Education Best Children's Book of the Year, Outstanding Merit! "A boy grapples with his father’s harrowing literary project on the killing of children throughout history. Bold graphic illustrations on each page explore the devastating themes. For ages 12-14, mature content."
Bank Street College of Education
About the Authors
Ricardo Chávez Castañeda was born in Mexico City in 1961. He is one of the founding members of Mexico's Crack literary movement. Chávez Castañeda has won many prizes for his writing, which includes novels, short stories, essays, and children's books. He holds a BA in Psychology from the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, and a Master's Degree in Creative Writing from New Mexico State University. He currently teaches at Middlebury College.
Alejandro Magallanes was born in Mexico City in 1971, and graduated from the National School of Plastic Arts of Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. He is dedicated to playing and working with letters and images, and he has created a style that has earned him important awards in Mexico and abroad. In addition to his extensive experience as a graphic designer and an illustrator, he is the author of books for children and young people.
Lawrence Schimel is a full-time author, writing in both Spanish and English, who has published over one hundred twenty books in a wide range of genres. He is also a prolific literary translator whose translations include La Bastarda (a Global Literature in Libraries Best Translated YA Honor Book, Lambda Literary Award finalist, and ALA Rainbow Book List selection) and Out in the Open (an Eisner Award finalist). He currently lives in Madrid.
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