YET ANOTHER NASTYBOOK

After trying his hand at a novel, Yourgrau returns to the format of his first NastyBook (2005), offering several dozen surreal mini-melodramas, most running only a page or two with the occasional typographic flight of fancy, deliberately lame poem or (one hopes) consciously ugly line drawing chucked in for variety. The author’s gift for bizarre premises is on full display: One child turns into a giraffe in the middle of her birthday party, another wonders why his father has taken to dressing up as the hind end of a horse, yet another wiggles his ears so vigorously that he takes flight. In other episodes, a diner starts falling apart piece by piece, an evil spirit takes up residence in a vending machine, two dweebs end their friendship after falling in love with the same imaginary dream girl and much, much more. Younger children looking for scary—but not too scary—tales and older reluctant readers will fall on Yourgrau’s latest with glad cries. (Short stories. 7-9)