Who You Gonna Call Ghostbusters 2016 Movie Book Review

The movie comes out on July 15th, but all of Simon Spotlight's books based on it are due for release on June 14th, a full month earlier. I opted to read and review the books now, even though that, obviously, spoils the movie for me. I have tried my best to make this review as spoiler-free as possible. If you're interested in buying this book, I would suggest either buying it now and filing it away until after you see the movie, or wait until July and buy it after seeing the movie. The point being: See the movie first, THEN read the book! (Also, images were quickly scanned in by me and any crookedness is not meant to reflect the actual product.)


June 14th sees the release of Who You Gonna Call? by David Lewman, a children's book based on the new Ghostbusters movie. It's part of the Ready-to-Read series (just like Proud To Be A Ghostbuster), classified at Level Three/Megastar Reader, which indicates that it features a "larger, more complex story plot and character development; challenging vocabulary words, and a more difficult sentence structure". The 6"x9" paperback tome is printed with a large font on plain paper stock and is suitable for the 6-8 year old age range (school grades 1-3), so that made for a light and fun breeze through the 40 pages. Released by the Simon and Schuster imprint, Simon Spotlight, this book carries a list price of $3.99, but you can always find it a little cheaper at Amazon, where an eBook version is also available.


Over six chapters, Who You Gonna Call? profiles the Ghostbusters, their equipment, and their history. The prose is written from the perspective of a sales brochure, meant to sell you, the reader, on using the Ghostbusters' services for all of your supernatural needs. The events of the new film have already happened.


One thing I've noticed about the book is that Jillian Holtzmann is never referred to solely by her first name as the other three Busters are. For example, on the profile pages, every one has their first name as the header except for Jillian, who only has her last name. Another example is found on the back cover synopsis (see image above). Kinda weird. Speaking of names, Kevin's last name is never given. not even in his profile. Until we recently spotted a promo photo of him holding up his headshots, we never knew it was "Beckman" because it was never included in any of the press materials so far. Since the last names of all of the ladies are given in the book, I would have expected for his to be, too.

Overall, a nice little book that could be considered the junior version of the Ghostbusters Handbook (to be reviewed here soon). I would surmise this to be the least spoilerific of all of the books based on the new movie. In fact, other than one sentence about Kevin and his possession (which was spoiled in the first trailer), this book is COMPLETELY SPOILER-FREE. For "little kids", this book would be suggestible, but those who want a little more "meat" would be better served by the Handbook.