June 1, 2024
Thirteen more terrifying tales. Following Only if You Dare (2021), Allen and Coleman's latest set of horror shorts for middle-grade readers once more strikes the perfect balance for its intended audience--frightening but never overly disturbing. This time around, ordinary objects reveal their true natures. Anything from a breakfast pastry to a sleeping bag could be a potentially deadly hazard, while familiar fears are proved not to be unfounded in this gruesome collection. In "Fortune," after a middle child who's always felt overlooked by his family receives a blank fortune cookie paper, he becomes literally invisible to the world; in "El Diablo," a bicycle has a mind of its own. A piano student realizes that her instrument may require a more painful sacrifice than her time and energy in "Sweat, Tears, Blood." The main characters aren't always on the receiving end of the danger, however--Damien has finally had enough of being called every name except his own in "The Emperor of Thumbtacks." Determined to be seen as "The Opposite of Cute," Emree inadvertently becomes a vampire when she purchases the wrong Halloween costume. The suspenseful tone and creeping dread aren't hampered by the stories' short lengths, and Coleman's dark, unsettling full-page illustrations further heighten the horror and add to the appeal of this well-paced, compelling anthology. Character names cue some racial diversity. Superbly scary. (Horror. 8-13)
COPYRIGHT(2024) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
August 1, 2024
Grades 5-7 The chills just keep coming in Allen's third collection of insomnia-inducing original shorts. If readers aren't kept awake by the opener, in which young Ethan discovers that there really are "Night Things" in his bedroom, or the closer, in which another bedroom boojum--identified only by a long-nailed, skinny hand in the illustration--threatens to stop "Hiding," they should at least be left wide eyed and likewise disturbed by the tales in between: of a murderous bicycle, a bloodthirsty piano, a hungry old sleeping bag, a maimed ghost eager to collect replacement fingers, and a child who finds her own face on a Toasty-Tart ("You Are What You Eat"). In the fine tradition of the classic Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark series, the illustrations, too, are appropriately dark and creepy, from a scatter of blood-smeared pages of music (with an all-too-relevant note about a "sharp" passage) to a class picture of sixth-grade zombies. Best read in daylight.
COPYRIGHT(2024) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
September 1, 2024
In the harrowing world of these thirteen creative short stories, bicycles can be demonic, your classmates might be zombies, and a fortune cookie might contain more than a harmless slip of paper. In a third collection of scary tales, Allen (Out to Get You; Only if You Dare, rev. 9/21) taps into the "what-ifs": what if, instead of your feeling like the invisible middle child, everyone truly forgot that you existed? What if, instead of your growing out of being afraid of creatures in the dark, those very creatures were just waiting for you to turn out the light and take your time hopping into bed? What if nobody in your new class believed that your old house was haunted by a ghost girl who wanted to chop off your fingers? Coleman's grayscale illustrations match the mild horror of the narratives, which, while not particularly gory, are not for the faint of heart. (Many of the stories' endings imply that the child protagonists die horrible deaths.) The dark fates and creepy buildups will appeal strongly to young readers who love to indulge their fears, and the stories are compelling enough to be read in one or two sittings. Fans of Schwartz's Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark (rev. 2/82) will have a great time reading this collection -- although, maybe, a hard time falling asleep. Sarah Berman
(Copyright 2024 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)
July 1, 2024
In the harrowing world of these thirteen creative short stories, bicycles can be demonic, your classmates might be zombies, and a fortune cookie might contain more than a harmless slip of paper. In a third collection of scary tales, Allen (Out to Get You; Only if You Dare, rev. 9/21) taps into the "what-ifs": what if, instead of your feeling like the invisible middle child, everyone truly forgot that you existed? What if, instead of your growing out of being afraid of creatures in the dark, those very creatures were just waiting for you to turn out the light and take your time hopping into bed? What if nobody in your new class believed that your old house was haunted by a ghost girl who wanted to chop off your fingers? Coleman's grayscale illustrations match the mild horror of the narratives, which, while not particularly gory, are not for the faint of heart. (Many of the stories' endings imply that the child protagonists die horrible deaths.) The dark fates and creepy buildups will appeal strongly to young readers who love to indulge their fears, and the stories are compelling enough to be read in one or two sittings. Fans of Schwartz's Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark (rev. 2/82) will have a great time reading this collection -- although, maybe, a hard time falling asleep.
(Copyright 2024 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)