Grab a flashlight and a blanket—this lives up to its titular claim.
Can reading a story make it real?
After her grandmother has been missing for a year and is presumed dead, Amelia and her younger brother, Winter, go with their moms to clean out her house. In a dream, Grandmother appears to Amelia, leading her to the attic, where she discovers a weathered book called Tales To Keep You up at Night, complete with a spine label and due date card. Grandmother warns her not to read it, so Amelia returns it to the library and learns from the librarian that it isn’t part of their collection. Overcome by curiosity, she settles into a cozy corner to read the 13 stories with titles like “Baby Witch” and “Screamers.” As she finishes the final entry, she discovers she’s alone in the library—it’s been locked up for the night, and there’s no sign of Win or the librarian. A sense of disquieting horror settles over her. Could the stories Amelia was reading become reality? Alternating between Amelia’s storyline and the contents of the book she’s reading, Poblocki’s delightfully constructed offering is somewhere between a literary matryoshka and an ouroboros as the vignettes twine perilously around each other, rewarding close readers and demanding rereads. It includes well-established genre tropes like creepy clowns and being buried alive, making it a fun distillation of elements from crowd pleasers by authors like R.L. Stine and Alvin Schwartz. Amelia and her family read White.
Grab a flashlight and a blanket—this lives up to its titular claim. (Horror. 8-12)Pub Date: Aug. 16, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-593-38747-4
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: May 9, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Funny delivery, but some jokes really miss the mark.
An animal ghost seeks closure after enduring aquatic atrocities.
In this sequel to The Incredibly Dead Pets of Rex Dexter (2020), sixth grader Rex is determined to once again use his ability to communicate with dead animals for the greater good. A ghost narwhal’s visit gives Rex his next opportunity in the form of the clue “bad water.” Rex enlists Darvish—his Pakistani American human best friend—and Drumstick—his “faithful (dead) chicken”—to help crack the case. But the mystery is only one of Rex’s many roadblocks. For starters, Sami Mulpepper hugged him at a dance, and now she’s his “accidental girlfriend.” Even worse, Darvish develops one of what Rex calls “Game Preoccupation Disorders” over role-playing game Monsters & Mayhem that may well threaten the pair’s friendship. Will Rex become “a Sherlock without a Watson,” or can the two make amends in time to solve the mystery? This second outing effectively carries the “ghost-mist” torch from its predecessor without feeling too much like a formulaic carbon copy. Spouting terms like plausible deniability and in flagrante delicto, Rex makes for a hilariously bombastic (if unlikable) first-person narrator. The over-the-top style is contagious, and black-and-white illustrations throughout add cartoony punchlines to various scenes. Unfortunately, scenes in which humor comes at the expense of those with less status are downright cringeworthy, as when Rex, who reads as White, riffs on the impossibility of his ever pronouncing Darvish’s surname or he plays dumb by staring into space and drooling.
Funny delivery, but some jokes really miss the mark. (Paranormal mystery. 8-12)Pub Date: May 4, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-7595-5523-5
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: March 15, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2021
Offers a hauntingly truthful view of secrets and strength.
A tale of survival, friendship, and the strength that comes from overcoming fears.
Middle schooler Jac is dealing with the fallout of a real-life nightmare: childhood cancer. But it’s not just the fear of recurrence that she has to handle, but the reality of surviving and carrying the burden of her mom’s constant worry. When Jac discovers a large house that wasn’t there before looming at the end of a street in her suburban New Jersey neighborhood, she worries it’s a hallucination, which could mean a recurrence of her illness. But after her best friend, a boy named Hazel, sees the house too, her sense of adventure takes over. Provoked by a couple of bullies who dare them to enter and then follow them inside, Jac and Hazel explore the house and are met with surprises—like a key with Jac’s likeness on it—that suggest her connection to this strange and terrifying place is personal. Before long, the kids realize they are trapped inside. Shocks follow with every new door they open as they search for an exit and discover ever increasing frights. Delightfully nightmarish visions chase Jac, offering the feel of a thrilling game with twisted and terrifying imagery, as she navigates the house, seeking to understand her connection to this unusual place in this emotionally resonant story. Characters seem to default to White.
Offers a hauntingly truthful view of secrets and strength. (Paranormal. 8-12)Pub Date: Aug. 16, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-06-313657-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Katherine Tegen/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 9, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
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