A good blend of spooky and silly.
A scary-story–lovers’ club takes on a local haunting.
Misery Falls, Oregon, was the home of notorious killer Silas Hoke, said to return on the anniversary of his death to claim another victim. It’s also the hometown of the Grim Sleepers, a monthly sleepover club of middle school friends who are devoted to telling scary stories. Recently, though, the stories aren’t doing it, especially compared to the girls’ real-life conflicts: Track star Whisper’s newly blended family includes her bully; actor Frannie’s former best friend is now her rival in the school play; overachieving Sophie lives in her even more perfect sister’s shadow; and supernatural true believer (and club leader) Gemma struggles not to mess up her job at her family’s business, the Spirit Sanctuary. A creepy anonymous text message gathers the girls by Silas’ grave one night, where they’re surprised to see who wishes to join them and listen to a story, a cautionary tale about technology addiction in which texting thumbs go rogue. Moralizing calls for sympathy for villains (from school bullies to Silas himself) ring hollow but are fortunately brief. The humor is strong throughout, and the story is strongest when keeping readers guessing about what’s real—both in the interpersonal conflicts and the seemingly supernatural happenings. The cliffhanger plays up this element in order to launch readers into the next book. Most cast members present White; one key character is Japanese American.
A good blend of spooky and silly. (Horror. 8-13)Pub Date: Sept. 6, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-4549-4454-6
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Union Square Kids
Review Posted Online: June 21, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2022
Good Guys and Bad get just deserts in the end, and Stanley gets plenty of opportunities to display pluck and valor in this...
Sentenced to a brutal juvenile detention camp for a crime he didn't commit, a wimpy teenager turns four generations of bad family luck around in this sunburnt tale of courage, obsession, and buried treasure from Sachar (Wayside School Gets a Little Stranger, 1995, etc.).
Driven mad by the murder of her black beau, a schoolteacher turns on the once-friendly, verdant town of Green Lake, Texas, becomes feared bandit Kissin' Kate Barlow, and dies, laughing, without revealing where she buried her stash. A century of rainless years later, lake and town are memories—but, with the involuntary help of gangs of juvenile offenders, the last descendant of the last residents is still digging. Enter Stanley Yelnats IV, great-grandson of one of Kissin' Kate's victims and the latest to fall to the family curse of being in the wrong place at the wrong time; under the direction of The Warden, a woman with rattlesnake venom polish on her long nails, Stanley and each of his fellow inmates dig a hole a day in the rock-hard lake bed. Weeks of punishing labor later, Stanley digs up a clue, but is canny enough to conceal the information of which hole it came from. Through flashbacks, Sachar weaves a complex net of hidden relationships and well-timed revelations as he puts his slightly larger-than-life characters under a sun so punishing that readers will be reaching for water bottles.
Good Guys and Bad get just deserts in the end, and Stanley gets plenty of opportunities to display pluck and valor in this rugged, engrossing adventure. (Fiction. 9-13)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 978-0-374-33265-5
Page Count: 233
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2000
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The three way chats, in which they are joined by other animals, about web spinning, themselves, other humans—are as often...
A successful juvenile by the beloved New Yorker writer portrays a farm episode with an imaginative twist that makes a poignant, humorous story of a pig, a spider and a little girl.
Young Fern Arable pleads for the life of runt piglet Wilbur and gets her father to sell him to a neighbor, Mr. Zuckerman. Daily, Fern visits the Zuckermans to sit and muse with Wilbur and with the clever pen spider Charlotte, who befriends him when he is lonely and downcast. At the news of Wilbur's forthcoming slaughter, campaigning Charlotte, to the astonishment of people for miles around, spins words in her web. "Some Pig" comes first. Then "Terrific"—then "Radiant". The last word, when Wilbur is about to win a show prize and Charlotte is about to die from building her egg sac, is "Humble". And as the wonderful Charlotte does die, the sadness is tempered by the promise of more spiders next spring.
The three way chats, in which they are joined by other animals, about web spinning, themselves, other humans—are as often informative as amusing, and the whole tenor of appealing wit and pathos will make fine entertainment for reading aloud, too.Pub Date: Oct. 15, 1952
ISBN: 978-0-06-026385-0
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1952
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
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