Darkness Creeping

July 1, 2007
Gr 5 Up-A good subtitle for this delightfully demented collection might be "Be Careful What You Wish For]." Highlights include "Who Do We Appreciate?," in which a teenager referees a children's soccer game of unimaginable importance; "Same Time Next Year," which points out a rather obvious problem with the whole notion of time travel; "Connecting Flight," which will make readers NEVER want to board an airplane again; and "Ralphy Sherman's Root Canal," which will make them NEVER forget to brush their teeth. And, if they share the author's aversion to the flying monkeys in "The Wizard of Oz", they might want to approach "Monkeys Tonight" with trepidation. Shusterman's characters range in age from early to middle teens. They're mean to their siblings, or don't listen to those older and wiser, or wish for things they shouldn't, and boy, do they regret it. Extremely readable and elegantly creepy, the selections are perfect for reading aloud or recommending to reluctant readers. The brief introduction to each story gives insight into the author's thought processes, and go a little way toward answering that age-old question: "Where do you get your ideas?" The book includes stories originally published in 1993 and 1995, plus four new tales."Mara Alpert, Los Angeles Public Library"

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