Fairy Tale Reimagined: Bean Stalker and Other Hilarious Scary Tales

Bean Stalker and Other Hilarious Scary Tales
by Kiersten White
Scholastic Press
2017
240 pages
ISBN: 9780545940603

Publication date: Available July 25, 2017

Who doesn't love a catty narrator who knows everything and drops hints for the readers along the way? Kiersten White takes mid-grade readers on a romp through some of our best loved fairy tales twisting the stories so that they are darker, gloomier, and scarier and much, much more fun.

Rapunzel with her locks of hair "locked" in a tower awaits her prince. The bumbling prince manages to scale the side of the castle tower and meets a glowering Rapunzel who points out the obvious--there is a door! On the other side of the tower if  the prince had simply walked around it, he would not have  needed to climb her hair!

Snow White, Little Red Riding Hood, The Princess and the Pea, Jack and the Beanstalk and other tales are twisted into comedy gold by White. The wood represents everything magical, scary, strange, weird, and possible. The narrator teases the readers, "No? You....want to go into the deepest, darkest woods? But nothing good ever happens there! Fine. Don't say I didn't warn you."  The Huntsman in the Snow White story is as dopey, loopy, and stupid as a comic clown could be.  The queen writes her instructions in a note and gives it to her Huntsman with the hope that he will somehow carry out her wishes to kill the "creature" in the bag (Snow White). The Huntsman nods and smiles and never tells the queen that he can't read. Comedy ensues.

Laugh out loud funny, Bean Stalker and Other Hilarious Scary Tales is my early pick for the Texas Bluebonnet List and likely to be in the running for the Newbery. Biting satire, diabolic dialog, hilarious hi-jinks, and cunning characters make this book a true charmer. This is a Scholastic Book and bound to be on fall book fair. It will probably be the bestseller of the year!

The cover design is appealing and a trick for your eyes. What do you see? Look carefully. There is more than one way to "see" this cover. The cover alone will sell this book. Simply brilliant marketing!

Highly, highly recommended grade 5-up. Strong readers grade 4 will also enjoy  this book but may not understand some of the puns or  digs. Pick this one up and be delighted!

FTC Required Disclaimer: I received the ARC from the publisher. I did not receive monetary compensation for this review.

Spooky Middle Grades Pick: The Gathering (Shadow House, Book 1)

The Gathering
Shadow House, Book 1
By  Dan Poblocki
Scholastic
2016
224  pages  (with some illustrations)
Available August 30, 2016

"Shadow House has everything I love--strange characters, magic and the supernatural, endless danger and adventure--and a mystery I dare any reader to try to solve. I can't wait to read the whole series!"--R.L. Stine, author of Goosebumps (from the ARC mailing)


Creeptastic! Suspense driven and utterly entertaining, The Gathering (Book 1) will leave young readers breathless! The Gathering (Shadow House, book 1) is the best middle grades read I've read in a long time!

 "Enter Shadow House, if you dare"...beware who you trust and try to remember the way you passed, but that won't be enough. In Shadow House, passages change, doors appear and disappear, strange children threaten from the shadows. Something bad has happened here and for the new kids, they have to solve the mystery in order to free themselves from the hold the house has over them.

Strangers orphan Poppy, twin child actors Dylan and Dash, musical prodigy Marcus, and shy girl Azumi meet at the abandoned edifice of Shadow House, each being summoned there for different reasons. Poppy thinks she's meeting her great aunt Delphina who will give Poppy a "forever home." Marcus thinks he's accepted into an exclusive music program. Dylan and Dash think they're set to star in a new series and Azumi wants to escape the Pacific Northwest, her sister's strange disappearance,  and attend an East coast boarding school. The children enter the stone building and are intrigued by its vast grandeur but mystified by the look of the place. It looks abandoned--as if lost in time. The furnishings, paintings, and even some paperwork in an office look to be decades old.

As the kids begin to investigate, they split up (never a bright idea!) I guess these children have never seen a scary movie or read a scary book. As they are separated, each encounters a strange child in an animal mask. The apparitions begin to threaten them. The kids are going to have to work together if they expect to survive Shadow House!

Wildly imaginative and spooky, readers may have to sleep with the lights on!

There is a FREE app in the works for  phones or tablets at Shadow House. Create a username and password and log in. you can read ghost stories, "...where the choices you make determine your fate."

This is a Scholastic book, so I am sure it will be a huge seller at back to school and fall book fairs. Keep your eyes open, books 2 and 3 are scheduled for January 2017 and September 2017 respectively.

Highly, highly recommended grade 3-up. Perfect for tween and middle grade readers. Reluctant readers will devour this series.

FTC Required Disclaimer: I received the ARC from the publisher. I did not receive monetary compensation for this review.

YA Pick

House of Dark Shadows

(Dreamhouse Kings, Book One)

by Robert Liparulo

Thomas Nelson, Inc.

286 pages, with reading group guide



Xander King is not happy to be leaving his friends in Pasadena and moving to a small "hicksville" town in the mountains of northern California. His father has taken a new position--principal of Pinedale High School. The King family buys a creepy, abandoned Victorian house in a heavily wooded rural area. Soon, as expected, even creepier things begin to happen. Giant footprints are left in the dust. There are strange voices and creaky noises; things go bump in the night. Victoria, Xander's little sister, sees a huge intruder standing in her room.



Xander and his brother David discover a closet that has a secret portal. They step into the portal and out of a locker--in the hallway of Pinedale High School. Other portals lead to much more dangerous destinations.



Xander's dad has a secret, and when Xander discovers what it is, it threatens the safety of the entire family.



Part scary, spooky thriller, part strange, twister killer mystery, part time travel sci-fi genre, this debut YA novel will appeal to readers of spooky stuff like Mary Downing Hahn and lovers of Anthony Horowitz's Horowitz Horror.



Recommended for reluctant readers, grades 5-9 and anyone who enjoys creepy old houses. Book Two is Watcher in the Woods and now available.

High Schol/Adult Thriller

Relentless

by Dean Koontz

Bantam Books, 2010

428 pages.

Koontz's latest novel is thrilling, provocative, and shows his finesse as a wordsmith. He is a magician, a wit, a curmudgeon, a surgeon, a master, a poet, a keen observer, a biting satirist. Never has Koontz been this spot-on. He slays literary agents and book reviewers with equal punning intended.

Cubby is a celebrated novelist and makes quite a good living churning out best sellers. His wife writes children's books. Together they parent an eight-year old genius named Milo and a dog Lassie--named by the eight year old, of course. Life is good, until Cubby's latest book gets a bad review from a literary critic. Sherman Waxx can make or break novelists. He is an enigma wrapped up inside a mystery! Koontz is at his comic best when he takes swipes at an on-line encyclopedia--could it be Wikipedia???--and quotes that "Waxx is an enema..." the site meaning "enigma," of course.

This literary critic is not just your average mean-tempered snoot--he is an evil madman who will stop at nothing until Cubby and his family are dead. Relentless is as thrilling as it gets. You won't be able to put down this page-turner. I would say this is Koontz's best novel, by far.

Koontz offers his insight into writing prose as well when Cubby says, "Outlines are a waste of time. If you give your characters free will, they will grow in ways you never anticipated and they will take the stories places your could not have predicted" (p. 79).

Koontz offers his view on fine dining establishments and the kind of foodies they attract. "Such restaurants seek and attract a type of customer whose very existence, in such numbers, proves our civilization is dying: boisterous and free-spending egotists taught since infancy that self-esteem matters more than knowledge..."

Koontz may well become the Will Rogers wit of his generation. He turns a phrase as deftly as a maestro, and he is becoming the voice of the intelligent, although outnumbered by the scores of ignorant boors and wanna-be intellectuals.

Recommended for high school collections, adult collections. Violence, some language.

High School Picks

Shutter Island
by Dennis Lehane
Harper Collins, 2003
325 pages

Shutter Island is one crazy dream of a book. U. S. Marshal Teddy Daniels and his partner are sent to Shutter Island to investigate the disappearance of an escaped patient from Ashecliffe Hospital for the Criminally Insane. Soon, they are neck deep in mystery--how does an insane woman escape from a locked room? What are the cryptic clues Teddy is receiving and who is leaving the clues? What really goes on in Ward C? Are the doctors a super-secret government medical team investigating drug experimentation and mind control? Since the story takes place in 1954, Lehane is able to use history fact and fiction to present a sense of disbelief yet belief that the U.S. government would actually use a mental hospital to experiment on mental patients.

In a superb twist, Lehane makes readers question what is really going on--who is in charge, who is really insane, who is sane, and what constitutes sanity? Is the whole island an experiment to control thoughts and behaviors? There is no one better than Lehane at capturing character through subtle action and dialog. Shutter Island ranks right next to Mystic River as a great character study. Any budding novelist should read Lehane to get dialog right. He is the master.

The movie starring Leonardo di Caprio as Teddy should be a spooky tale.