THE CANNIBALS OF SUNSET DRIVE

Fifth-grader Mike narrates the horrors that he and friends Kenny and Pratt imagine are behind an old monastery's walls. They're certain the ``cannibal monks'' who live there are surveying the neighborhood from their tower, waiting hungrily in the shadows for a boy to stray into their garden, where there are at first 12, then 13, graves. With typical childlike thrill- seeking, the three make each other walk the feared garden wall. One day Mike missteps and plunges down the other side, where he's befriended by elderly Father Lawrence. While the rest of his tale is hardly a surprise (Mike comes to appreciate the monastery, and also learns to trust his own mind rather than following Pratt's boastful lead), Carlsruh works in an affecting amount of imagined scariness; readers will also find double meanings in nearly every sentence Father Lawrence utters. The best line comes with news that nuns are taking over the monastery: ``Now it's the girls' turn.'' A first novel that offers a well-realized slice of childhood. (Fiction. 9-11)