STARBRIGHT AND THE DREAM EATER

An alien predator that strikes through dreams threatens all humanity in this contrived but suspenseful import from the versatile Cowley (Red-Eyed Tree Frog, 1999, etc.). Spindle Sickness, a mysterious plague that begins with nightmares and ends in death, has struck several of Starbright Connor's schoolmates. She learns of a widely ridiculed message purportedly sent through time and space by the "Guardians of the Universe" decades before. This message has warned of an all-devouring danger that can be countered only by a "Bright Star" who is without fear. Having always been able, to a certain extent, to control her dreams, Starbright finds that only she can resist the Dream Eater's attacks. As the spread of the disease brings public anxiety and local quarantines, off she hies to do battle, in a series of dreamscapes, against an enemy who proves as wily as it is powerful. Thanks to unexpected help from her brain-damaged older sister (who, in a pointless, badly fumbled subplot turns out to be her mother!), Starbright discovers that just confronting the Dream Eater with love rather than fear or anger vanquishes it so thoroughly that time itself rewinds, settling on an alternate "overlay" in which the creature never existed. Though not up to the standards of such terror classics as Neal Shusterman's Eyes of Kid Midas (1992) or Margaret Mahy's Changeover (1984), this will still provide readers with some unnerving moments and a resourceful, self-confident heroine. (Fiction. 11-13)