Expertly crafted, with most of the gory details left to the imagination.
In graphic versions of three previously published episodes, the “extreme family fun” offered at Freddy Fazbear’s Mega Pizzaplex runs to dismemberment and attacks by blob monsters.
Graphic in format but not—disappointingly, perhaps, to some readers—visual content, the tales feature mostly offstage carnage and rely heavily for their impact on suggestion and sound effects. In “Under Construction,” Maya has a Sweet 16 party with friends. They venture into in an augmented reality arcade that’s not quite ready for visitors, which she leaves (or so she thinks), only to find that people around her are dying of cancer and being replaced by hordes of weirdly blobby, pinkish, veined claylike figures. In the other stories, robots become gruesomely insistent on helping two young visitors lost in a maze, and a Pizzaplex workman named Grady gets caught in a series of looping tunnels meant for small children. The horrific consequences are visible as largely discreet splashes of gore. Maya’s extensive grief and a childhood experience of being locked in a closet that left Grady deeply cleithrophobic stir in some psychodrama, but the main appeal here can be summed up by the closing panel, which contains nothing but a bone-crunching “SPLURCH.” The art, though drawn and colored by a different set of artists for each story, has a consistent look throughout, and features a human cast that presents as racially diverse.
Expertly crafted, with most of the gory details left to the imagination. (Graphic horror. 12-16)Pub Date: March 4, 2025
ISBN: 9781546128434
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Graphix/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Dec. 14, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
Reminiscent of fairy tales and full of enchantment.
In this sequel to the 2022 series opener, Long Live the Pumpkin Queen by Shea Ernshaw, Sally must mend time itself.
It’s been a year since Sally married Jack Skellington and discovered her Dream Town origins, and she’s spread thin between performing her duties as Pumpkin Queen and managing relations among all the holiday realms. Arguments and misunderstandings have arisen between visitors and residents of each realm, so Sally proposes hosting cultural exhibitions to help smooth over their interactions, starting with one in Halloween Town. To help with the extra work, Sally takes on an apprentice—fellow rag doll Luna, a teen with dreams of going on adventures instead of following in the family business of writing bedtime stories. Chaos ensues during the festivities when a swapped potion ingredient opens a portal that sucks Sally and Luna into Time Town. Even worse, Halloween Town’s magical clock has been destroyed by a shadowy enemy, setting the realm’s timeline to the distant past. To get back to the Halloween Town of her present, Sally embarks on an adventure with Luna and their new friend, a dragon called Scorch. Sally, Luna, and Scorch make a fantastic trio, with Sally’s maturity and bravery contrasting with Luna’s wide-eyed youthfulness and Scorch’s desire to become a hero. Despite a slow start and stereotypical elements in some of the towns, the engaging lore and tense, thrilling race to fix time will engage readers.
Reminiscent of fairy tales and full of enchantment. (Fantasy. 12-16)Pub Date: July 8, 2025
ISBN: 9781368089302
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Disney/Random House
Review Posted Online: Aug. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Characters to love, quips to snort at, insights to ponder: typical Spinelli.
For two teenagers, a small town’s annual cautionary ritual becomes both a life- and a death-changing experience.
On the second Wednesday in June, every eighth grader in Amber Springs, Pennsylvania, gets a black shirt, the name and picture of a teen killed the previous year through reckless behavior—and the silent treatment from everyone in town. Like many of his classmates, shy, self-conscious Robbie “Worm” Tarnauer has been looking forward to Dead Wed as a day for cutting loose rather than sober reflection…until he finds himself talking to a strange girl or, as she would have it, “spectral maiden,” only he can see or touch. Becca Finch is as surprised and confused as Worm, only remembering losing control of her car on an icy slope that past Christmas Eve. But being (or having been, anyway) a more outgoing sort, she sees their encounter as a sign that she’s got a mission. What follows, in a long conversational ramble through town and beyond, is a day at once ordinary yet rich in discovery and self-discovery—not just for Worm, but for Becca too, with a climactic twist that leaves both ready, or readier, for whatever may come next. Spinelli shines at setting a tongue-in-cheek tone for a tale with serious underpinnings, and as in Stargirl (2000), readers will be swept into the relationship that develops between this adolescent odd couple. Characters follow a White default.
Characters to love, quips to snort at, insights to ponder: typical Spinelli. (Fiction. 12-15)Pub Date: Aug. 3, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-30667-3
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 31, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2021
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