Ideal for any younger reader looking for bite-sized horror.
Very short and scary stories.
Twenty different entries, with atmospheric illustrations, create new yet classic-feeling tales for younger readers. Rissi uses a variety of storytelling elements to make a collection that combines a timeless quality with contemporary forms, from a young girl playing an eternal game of hide-and-seek in a cornfield to a deadly chain letter sent via text. While the majority of them are straightforward prose, one story is told through the format of the dialogue of a play pieced together from the memories of audience members after the cast and script disappeared. The attempts at rhyme are less successful. As in any collection, readers will have favorites and ones they skip upon rereading, but the cumulative effect here is successful and consistent. A few (especially one tale about crows and the privileges one gets from being part of a murder) seem to have more allegorical meanings. These are all a scare level appropriate for an upper-elementary audience, and the blunt writing means that the creepy factor is present more in the concepts themselves, which linger in the mind, than the actual telling, which is more matter-of-fact than spine-chilling. The full-page charcoal-style illustrations do provide a sense of ominous eeriness, however. There is a small amount of surface-level diversity among the cast.
Ideal for any younger reader looking for bite-sized horror. (Horror. 7-11)Pub Date: Aug. 3, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-06-302695-7
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Quill Tree Books/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 31, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2021
Lighthearted spook with a heaping side of silliness—and hair.
Fifth graders get into a hairy situation.
After an unnamed narrator’s full-page warning, readers dive right into a Wolver Hollow classroom. Mr. Noffler recounts the town legend about how, every Oct. 19, residents don fake mustaches and lock their doors. As the story goes, the late Bockius Beauregard was vaporized in an “unfortunate black powder incident,” but, somehow, his “magnificent mustache” survived to haunt the town. Once a year, the spectral ’stache searches for an exposed upper lip to rest upon. Is it real or superstition? Students Parker and Lucas—sole members of the Midnight Owl Detective Agency—decide to take the case and solve the mustache mystery. When they find that the book of legends they need for their research has been checked out from the library, they recruit the borrower: goth classmate Samantha von Oppelstein. Will the three of them be enough to take on the mustache and resolve its ghostly, unfinished business? Whether through ridiculous plot points or over-the-top descriptions, the comedy keeps coming in this first title in McGee’s new Night Frights series. A generous font and spacing make this quick-paced, 13-chapter story appealing to newly confident readers. Skaffa’s grayscale cartoon spot (and occasional full-page) illustrations help set the tone and accentuate the action. Though neither race or skin color is described in the text, images show Lucas and Samantha as light-skinned and Parker as dark-skinned.
Lighthearted spook with a heaping side of silliness—and hair. (maps) (Fiction. 7-10)Pub Date: Aug. 31, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-5344-8089-6
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Aladdin
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2021
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Funny, scary in the right moments, and offering plenty of historical facts.
Catfished…by a ghost!
Harry Mancini, an 11-year-old White boy, was born and lives in Harry Houdini’s house in New York City. It’s no surprise, then, that he’s obsessed with Houdini and his escapology. Harry and his best friend, Zeke, are goofing around in some particularly stupid ways (“Because we’re idiots,” Zeke explains later) when Harry hits his head. In the aftermath of a weeklong coma, Harry finds a mysterious gift: an ancient flip phone that has no normal phone service but receives all-caps text messages from someone who identifies himself as “HOUDINI.” Harry is wary of this unseen stranger, like any intelligently skeptical 21st-century kid, but he’s eventually convinced: His phone friend is the real deal. So when Houdini asks Harry to try one of his greatest tricks, Harry agrees. Harry—so full of facts about Houdini that he litters his storytelling with infodumps, making him an enthusiastic tour guide to Houdini’s life—is easily tricked by his supportive-seeming hero. Harry, Zeke, and Houdini are all just the right amount of snarky, and while Harry’s terrifying adventure has an occasionally inconsistent voice, the humor and tension make this an appealing page-turner. Archival photographs of Harry Houdini make the ghostly visitation feel closer. Zeke is Black, and Harry Houdini, as he was in life, is a White Jewish immigrant.
Funny, scary in the right moments, and offering plenty of historical facts. (historical note, bibliography) (Supernatural adventure. 9-11)Pub Date: March 2, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-8234-4515-8
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Holiday House
Review Posted Online: Jan. 26, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2021
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