DON'T OPEN THE DOOR AFTER THE SUN GOES DOWN

Hapless travelers are turned to wood, a doll house weeps in the middle of the night, a young woman is transformed into a puppy, and a little girl's life is saved by the spirit of her great-grandmother in this hateful collection of nine mystery/horror tales. The tone, small-minded and mean-spirited, is off-putting, and the stories are curiously lacking in a sense of context, character, or place. For instance, in the title story, ``Don't Open the Door After the Sun Goes Down,'' two wicked brothers and their innocent little brother are lost in the woods, but we never know whether we are in this century or a prior one. These tales are not so much scary as contrived and the b&w illustrations that accompany them are crude and ugly. (Fiction. 8-12)