Invasion of the Appleheads

October 1, 2012

Gr 2-5-Two more titles in a freakishly fun series that's soon to be a live-action television show. In Baskerville, Adam Riley and his friends blow off J. J. Leeds's invitation to his elephant-themed birthday party for "Tent Night," when all the neighborhood kids pitch tents in their backyards, then ditch them and hang out after their parents fall asleep. The night doesn't go quite as planned, however, when the kids start disappearing. It seems that the rumored Beast of Baskerville might not be a rumor after all. In Appleheads, Katie and Andy Lawrence, new in town, are anxious to explore the Appleton apple orchard, where, according to local legend, an angry witch turned the town's children into zombies 300 years ago by tainting their apples. The family is greeted by the witchy Yaga and led on a hayride driven by a suspiciously realistic scarecrow. The ride turns into more than they'd paid for when their parents disappear and the apple-picking kids they'd recognized from town seem oddly...zombielike. The siblings soon discover that Appleton's adults have all been turned into shrunken applehead dolls, and it's up to them, with help from the local library, to figure out how to break the witch's spell. Not for the squeamish, but filled with enough humor to ease the scarier moments, the books promise plenty of flashlight reading and slumber-party retellings. Both fast-paced and perfectly spooky, they do well in filling a horror-story gap for fans of Marcia Thornton Jones's "Bailey School Kids" (Scholastic) and R. L. Stein's "Goosebumps" series (Scholastic).-Joanna Sondheim, Columbia Grammar & Preparatory School, New York City

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