Discriminating readers may want to look elsewhere.
Bad enough being a newly undead nerd...but Ed's renegade left arm is trying to kill him!
After several strange near-accidents, 13-year-old Ed Bagley wakes up dead. Before that shock wears off, he finds his left arm missing—and then out of nowhere it attacks him! Once he escapes his possessed left arm, he meets Max Moon, a teen werewolf who has been designated his "Dead Buddy." Thank goodness, Max can introduce Ed to Jemini and Evil Clive, who (at least according to Max) have some answers to newly zombified Ed's questions. Suffice to say, Ed is underwhelmed by the answers, but he is thankful for the help in avoiding the fat baby ghouls and, most importantly, in finding his arm, beating it and reattaching it. British children's author David Lee Stone attempts a third leap across the pond under a second pseudonym with, as before, mixed results. (Writing as "David Grimstone," he created the Gladiator Boy series with James de la Rue.) The British-to-American translation is inconsistent and may confuse, and the illustrations often don't match the descriptions in the text. Fans of silly, gory zombie fiction can do better, but the large type and brisk pace make this a possibility for the more reluctant readers among them. Two sequels out already in the U.K. may follow.
Discriminating readers may want to look elsewhere. (Funny horror. 9-12)Pub Date: Aug. 16, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-59514-531-4
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Razorbill/Penguin
Review Posted Online: May 22, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2012
A fitting finale for a top-notch series.
Evie returns once more to the Dark Sun Side, a terrifying land of nightmarish creatures.
This trilogy closer takes place just weeks after 12-year-old Evie narrowly escaped the Dark Sun Side in 2023’s The Nighthouse Keeper. Evie has been living with her aunt Desdemona, believing her parents’ lives were lost in a house fire—but she discovers they’ve been held captive in the Dark Sun Side by the demented creature called the Clackity. Evie, who’s cued white, strikes a bargain with the Clackity and embarks on a series of quests: Succeed, and she gets her parents back; fail, and she risks losing her own life. Accompanied by the lovable Bird, her tattooed companion who’s nestled into her skin and sends her warnings, Evie bravely uses her resourcefulness and altruism to tackle tasks that take her through places like an otherworldly ocean, desert, and forest. The most captivating of these expeditions takes her to the Winterlands, a place that’s striking and chilling in its beautiful descriptions. It’s only in this world that Cáceres’ otherwise evocatively creepy black-and-white illustrations fail to capture the vivid, haunting beauty described in the text. Senf’s storytelling is riveting and wildly imaginative, and her story is populated with unique, otherworldly creatures and characters. Evie’s death-defying crusade makes for a satisfying, compelling closing to the series.
A fitting finale for a top-notch series. (Horror. 9-12)Pub Date: Sept. 17, 2024
ISBN: 9781665934602
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Atheneum
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2024
Thoroughly, deliciously creepy.
A gathering of genuinely chilling tales, related by children in a classroom and presented in graphic format.
Invited by their teacher Ms. Nomed (mark the name) to tell “the eeriest story you have,” five young volunteers, variously light or dark of skin, stand up in turn to petrify their classmates. Alvin, for instance, shares a historical tale of a village that vanishes after previously friendly green bipedal “fish people” discover a taste for human flesh. Emily tells of a spaceship’s crew that looks human…right up until the tentacles shoot out of their eyes and mouths. Those and other tales that feature ghosts and conversations with a decapitated stranger are related in even tones that work effectively with the sepia and other subdued color schemes in Annable’s cartoon panels to provide properly slow builds to horrifying climaxes. The most lurid twist comes at the end of the last and longest entry, “The Door to Demons,” which turns out to be not made up at all but a frame story that touches off a mad scramble to escape a teacher who has suddenly transformed into a toothy, terrifying monster with a spectacularly weird upside-down head. It will take hardy readers indeed to sit comfortably in their own classrooms by day—or for that matter, hope for peaceful dreams at night—after these screamers.
Thoroughly, deliciously creepy. (Graphic horror. 9-12)Pub Date: July 18, 2023
ISBN: 9781250195036
Page Count: 368
Publisher: First Second
Review Posted Online: April 11, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2023
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