This gleefully macabre tale hints at a series with great potential.
This middle-grade thriller finds a brother and sister tangling with an impossibly powerful coin and a gruesome stalker.
Twelve-year-old RJ walks with his younger sister one summer evening. Shelly, who’s 10, is much braver than her brother. She stops to examine something in front of a decrepit, “castle-like house” at the end of their cul-de-sac. Behind the house is a wooded cliff and a lake, in which their father, a fisherman, recently disappeared. Shelly, a collector of weird things, picks up a coin and pockets it. As they walk, she suddenly screams in pain: “The coin—my leg!” RJ then hears a strange voice whisper, “Throw it in the lake.” After he throws the coin as far onto the property as possible, Shelly reveals she was kidding. They walk home, and RJ sees what look like red eyes near the castle. Later, RJ notices a scraggly man with a sharp cane, first at the grocery store, then at his and Shelly’s lemonade stand. This is the Impaler, whose presence terrifies RJ while Mom attends an award ceremony with Ed, her scientist boyfriend. Worse, the coin reappears, this time causing bizarre sores and strange evil urges in the normally timid RJ. Now he’s determined to banish the coin to the lake. Crantz begins a series, in the vein of R.L. Stine’s Goosebumps books, with this chilling blend of mystery and SF. Readers have plenty to juggle early on, primarily the true fate of the siblings’ father. The kids’ exploration of the horrid house kicks off the narrative’s second half. A few characters aren’t who they seem to be, and younger audiences will learn not to judge people by their appearances. The author effectively offers indelible images, like the Impaler, who’s “mangy and dirty like a coyote, but moved like a squid lost on land.” While the danger of the coin is entertaining, Crantz lays impressive groundwork for the series by introducing “Project: FrightVision,” which mentions other cursed objects and explains the whereabouts of Wally Swanson, a missing neighborhood child. Also noteworthy is RJ’s love of video games, which he can’t play while having his own adventures.
This gleefully macabre tale hints at a series with great potential.Pub Date: April 11, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-09-253849-7
Page Count: 164
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Aug. 18, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Colorfully relayed and gratifying to read.
It’s 1974, and Josephine and Mama have given up their tony apartment and moved into the Happy World Trailer Park, in Glendale, Tennessee. Only problem is, it isn’t a happy place.
With Josephine’s dad gone and Mama’s sewing business suffering financially, they have no choice. The limited third-person narration describes Josephine’s views of “every miserable thing there was to see in Happy World,” from the rundown trailers to the residents who are facing challenges. Josephine meets Lisa Marie, who’s also 10 and who lives with her grandaddy and great-uncle. Lisa Marie tells her about a girl from the neighborhood named Molly, who was kidnapped nearly a year ago and hasn’t been found. Molly’s mom looks as if she’s barely hanging on. Josephine is struggling, too, but she’s convinced that she and Molly have “a kind of sisterhood,” and she’s sure that if she can rescue Molly, her own circumstances will become bearable. Things move quickly after Josephine recognizes and interprets a clue that might point to Molly’s whereabouts, leading to a thrilling and dangerous climax. The resulting relationships forged are well worth it all. Josephine’s resilience and ability to reassess herself and her situation are admirable. Difficult topics such as divorce, poverty, abduction, terminal illness, and incarceration are thoughtfully and age-appropriately explored. Most characters are cued white.
Colorfully relayed and gratifying to read. (author’s note) (Historical fiction. 9-12)Pub Date: Oct. 24, 2023
ISBN: 9780823453696
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Holiday House
Review Posted Online: Aug. 26, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Grab a flashlight and a blanket—this lives up to its titular claim.
Can reading a story make it real?
After her grandmother has been missing for a year and is presumed dead, Amelia and her younger brother, Winter, go with their moms to clean out her house. In a dream, Grandmother appears to Amelia, leading her to the attic, where she discovers a weathered book called Tales To Keep You up at Night, complete with a spine label and due date card. Grandmother warns her not to read it, so Amelia returns it to the library and learns from the librarian that it isn’t part of their collection. Overcome by curiosity, she settles into a cozy corner to read the 13 stories with titles like “Baby Witch” and “Screamers.” As she finishes the final entry, she discovers she’s alone in the library—it’s been locked up for the night, and there’s no sign of Win or the librarian. A sense of disquieting horror settles over her. Could the stories Amelia was reading become reality? Alternating between Amelia’s storyline and the contents of the book she’s reading, Poblocki’s delightfully constructed offering is somewhere between a literary matryoshka and an ouroboros as the vignettes twine perilously around each other, rewarding close readers and demanding rereads. It includes well-established genre tropes like creepy clowns and being buried alive, making it a fun distillation of elements from crowd pleasers by authors like R.L. Stine and Alvin Schwartz. Amelia and her family read White.
Grab a flashlight and a blanket—this lives up to its titular claim. (Horror. 8-12)Pub Date: Aug. 16, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-593-38747-4
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: May 9, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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