Book Review - 'Long Live the Pumpkin Queen (Disney's Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas)' by Shea Ernshaw

This was an impulse buy from my local bookshop. I'm happy to announce it turned out to be a good decision.

I didn't grow up with 'The Nightmare Before Christmas'. It wasn't a video cassette tape fixture in our house (yes I'm that old) like it was with other Disney movies in my childhood. It wasn't until later on that I watched it once, maybe twice, but other things caught my attention, and I wasn't really into it like so many others were.

Not until this Halloween, when I decided to revisit it on Disney Plus (my free three-month subscription gift from a mobile phone service had just past at that point, but I'll hang on to paying for Disney Plus for a bit longer), and suddenly I'm obsessed. I don't know why I wasn't before - it's got what I usually love: stop motion animation, musicality - with iconic and memorable songs, Halloween, Christmas, weird and creative images, and tinges of that dark, funny and cartoony style. It's a precious, messy but fascinating and charming little gem of a movie, one of its kind, to be remembered throughout generations.

I wanted to read 'Long Live the Pumpkin Queen' immediately afterwards. Sally the rag doll in her own story, where she is the lone hero (plus Zero, in the beginning and in the end)? Where she has a massive crisis of identity, and cannot reconcile with being a queen - the queen of Halloween? Where, in her own coming-of-age fairy tale, she learns what it means to be a queen, and the extent of the gargantuan responsibilities to others that come with the title? Where, flawed and fragile (literally) as she is, she goes on journeys to save not only Halloween, but every holiday ever and the human world? Where she discovers revelations about herself, internally and otherwise?

Sign me up.

'Long Live the Pumpkin Queen' is an addictive, flowing, exciting, lovely, atmospheric, dramatic and stakes-filled, hugely creative novel for all ages. In my opinion, it is in a ton of respects what a sequel to 'The Nightmare Before Christmas' should be. It explores new worlds, horizons and possibilities; it expands upon the original film's premise. In the Acknowledgments, the author, Shea Ernshaw, and others involved in its planning and writing, they claim to love and have watched the film hundreds of times in their lives, and it shows. It even fills in some plot holes, making it flow organically all the same.

Sally herself is a remarkable and oddly relatable heroine, for a rag doll: in 'Long Live the Pumpkin Queen', queen or not, she's as dexterous, clever and resourceful as she is in the film. Her preexisting skills are utilised further. She is also very emotional, flighty and moody. She is in her own head a lot, and is prone to daydreaming, and wishing her life were different from what it is; in the novel's case she just wants more alone time with her true love, Jack Skellington, aka the best skeleton husband ever. As smart and often cunning as she is, she is a romantic at heart.

In my newfound love of 'The Nightmare Before Christmas' - and subsequently 'Long Live the Pumpkin Queen' - I realise I relate to Sally almost wholeheartedly (except for the rag doll part of course, and living in and then overcoming a past involving domestic abuse). We're both emotional, sensitive, intuitive, creative dreamers unsatisfied with our lowly, insignificant lives (but would be overwhelmed by too much attention). We both find information and comfort from books, like those about myths and fables. For our common sense and need to be alone most times, we yearn for sweet, soppy romantic love nonetheless. It's the feeling of being needed, and wanted for who we are, and simultaneously protected, in an equal, loving and supportive partnership. If it is all for that one special person, who feels the same way, then it should be enough. It should be worth it.

We are both optimists and pessimists, realists and dreamers, loners and social creatures who need love, light and dark, spooky Halloween night creatures and big softies (literally in Sally's case), twilight and crescent moon; contrary and complicated beings. We also fancy ourselves witches who like to brew potions, and who like black cats. In yet another contradiction, we're both nature witches and domestic witches in spirit (though I wouldn't be able to live without the internet, goddesses no).

And in relation to 'Long Live the Pumpkin Queen', yes, Sally does cry lots, but that's relatable to me, too! They are for understandable reasons, anyway. There's nothing wrong with expressing your emotions and feeling hopeless sometimes, even in dire situations where action - proactivity - must be instantaneous. We're not robots, and neither is Sally! Self-care and little breaks from everything are fine and should be encouraged, not repulsed. It makes us human, and no less brave and selfless.

The novel contains formatting errors later on, as well as a few inconsistencies and plot holes - unsurprising for a contemporary published lit - but at least there are no glaring grammar mistakes, repeated words and phrases, and other typos I'd come to dread in reading nowadays. Side characters and past details that could have been important are unfortunately forgotten about, too.

I conclude my love letter review of 'Long Live the Pumpkin Queen' by typing: It is a worthy and tantalisingly ambitious sequel to 'The Nightmare Before Christmas'. What a magical ride! And how well it writes the unique yet strangely human and relatable heroine - the dreamer rag doll Sally. It is more interesting, thrilling, action-packed, focused, imaginative and creative than the book sequel to another Disney film, 'Brave', called 'Bravely', in my opinion.

It's far from perfect, but nothing ever will be, and it does the legendary animated musical classic justice.

Final Score: 3.5/5

P.S. There is LBGTQ rep - at the start of the book, there are male lovers described in Valentine's Town, where Jack and Sally have their honeymoon. It's very minor but it's present. The cupids have demonstrated more than once they don't discriminate.