“Mom, there’s an eye in the sink.” Read on if you dare.
A new collection of original short chillers just right for sharing with unsuspecting middle graders.
Brown, a prolific composer and performer, expertly folds such familiar terror elements as malign ghosts and snatchers from the shadows, sudden fogs or storms, premonitions, and eerie local legends into contemporary American settings. Arranged beneath five rubrics, from “Something’s Not Safe at School” to “Better Not Mess with What’s Best Left Alone,” the 33 tales usually feature young people vanishing or coming to sudden ends through carelessness or not minding their elders. There are enough exceptions, though, for variety. There’s a vampire lad who attends a “Costume Party” disguised as a human boy (“No necking, now,” says his so-funny undead dad), an author and self-described “Bookworm” who eats her fans after a reading, and a solitary college grad who survives a home invasion thanks to a ghostly “Warning.” The author’s invention lags a bit in some entries toward the end, but her sober, matter-of-fact narrative style is just the ticket for keying up suspense. Even in the most gruesome tales (as in the one about an oversized bullfrog that delivers just deserts to a trio of frogs’-leg harvesters) she steers clear of explicit reference to gore and ichor. She seldom provides physical descriptions of her human victims, but their names suggest at least a bit of diversity.
“Mom, there’s an eye in the sink.” Read on if you dare. (Horror/short stories. 10-13)Pub Date: Oct. 3, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-939160-99-7
Page Count: 260
Publisher: August House
Review Posted Online: Aug. 1, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
In this series debut, Maggie Sinclair tracks down a dognapper and solves a mystery about the noises in the walls of her Brooklyn brownstone apartment building. The 12-year-old heroine, who shares a middle name—Brooklyn—with her twin brother, Finn, is juggling two dogwalking jobs she’s keeping secret from her parents, and somehow she attracts the ire of the dogs’ former walker. Maggie tells her story in the first person—she’s self-possessed and likable, even when her clueless brother invites her ex–best friend, now something of an enemy, to their shared 12th birthday party. Maggie’s attention to details helps her to figure out why dogs seem to be disappearing and why there seem to be mice in the walls of her building, though astute readers will pick up on the solution to at least one mystery before Maggie solves it. There’s a brief nod to Nancy Drew, but the real tensions in this contemporary preteen story are more about friendship and boy crushes than skullduggery. Still, the setting is appealing, and Maggie is a smart and competent heroine whose personal life is just as interesting as—if not more than—her detective work. (Mystery. 10-13)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2010
ISBN: 967-1-59990-525-9
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: Sept. 15, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2010
Writing as authority “Miss Edythe McFate,” Blume reveals that, even in New York, fairy folk are all around—having adapted to the urban environment—and so city children had best take special care not to run afoul of them. In two-dozen short chapters she introduces many types, explains their powers and (usually mischievous) proclivities and dispels common superstitions. She also suggests doable practices and strategies to stay on their good sides, such as leaving dishes of warm water, flower petals and Gummi bears around the house and ushering inchworms and ladybugs (all of which are fairy pets) found indoors back outside rather than killing them. Along with frequent weedy borders and corner spots, Foote adds portraits of chubby or insectile creatures, often in baroque attire. Interspersed with eight original tales (of children rescuing brownies ejected from the Algonquin Hotel during renovations, discovering a magical farm behind a door in the Lincoln Tunnel and so on), this collection of lore (much of it newly minted) offers an entertaining change of pace from the more traditional likes of Susannah Marriott’s Field Guide to Fairies (2009). (Informational fantasy. 10-13)
Pub Date: Sept. 14, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-375-86203-8
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: July 29, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2010
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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