Creepy Cafetorium is a series of 6 short stories with Nickelodeon-style illustrations, about a strange school. The stories include a potential alien invasion at a basketball practice, a shy girl becoming the center of attention of the auditorium spotlight, a child who finds a mysterious book at a book fair, and more. There are also filler pages that make the book more intriguing in between the stories, and a yearbook at the back.

Note: I received a free copy of this book from NetGalley. I was not compensated in any other fashion for the review and the opinions reflected below are entirely my own. Special thanks to the publisher and author for providing the copy.

Creepy Cafetorium (half cafeteria, half auditorium, half gymnasium where the clocks are always stuck at 2:14) contains 6 hair raising stories for the younger set. If you kid likes Goosebumps, this book is right up their alley! These are *just* scary enough to keep kids reading while not being so scary they'll keep them up at night (or who knows, maybe the stories willl mwah hah hah).

My favorite store was The Never-Ending Song, because I get songs stuck in my head *all the time*, and having a song stuck in an entire school's head is just horrifying!

This hits the perfect balance of spooky and funny that children of this age group love! Each chapter is accompanied by delightful illustrations.

Review to come September 17th to blog/goodreads.

I received this book from Netgalley in exchange of an honest review. 

I just couldn't resist this spooky looking short story collection featuring stories about Newville Elementary which has a BIG BIG Cafetorium which is the home of some spookyyyyyy and mysterious things happening. From Jell-O clones to goats and pickles. 

In these 6 short stories we follow various kids at the school (and sometimes even follow multiple kids given the song story). From a girl who LOVES to eat Jell-O to the point that it became a clone to the boy who tried to wow the school... but could only do one song. The stories were weird, over the top, strange, mysterious, sometimes a bit spooky, a dash annoying in case of the row row song as now I also got that darn song in my head ARGH. I definitely looked forward to what each story would bring and see what kind of things happen in that cafetorium. Not only that, I was also invested in finding out what kids eat there. Haha, sorry, school canteen/dining hall/whatever you call it always sound interesting to me. I mean, here we just take lunch with us to school, maybe get some light snacks and drinks from the store in the building or just go outside and hop to a grocery store (older classes only at least when I was at high school). With all the mysterious things happening at this place I just wanted to step in the book to pop into this world. It sounds delightful and like everyday brings something exciting. 

There was however one thing I wasn't a fan of in the stories... the inconclusive and sudden endings. It often just felt very off/undone. The story is just done, sometimes things are just not solved or solved in a magical way. It just could have been much better if things were tied up better. 

I loved that we had a guide/narrator. I always love it when stories have those and I especially love it when they are well-written and interesting. Gertie definitely fits that bill. She has worked 600 years in that place (curious what she is) and she knows ALL about what is going on in the Cafetorium. I just adored Gertie from the start and looked forward to what she had to tell us each time. 

The illustrations, they were just perfect and I really liked them A LOT. I am definitely curious to see what the artist has done more, will be looking them up soon. 

All in all, I quite enjoyed this book though again the endings could have been so much more and so less feel like non-endings. But the stories were fun and mysterious and reminded me of other (older) children's books featuring spooky things going on at school.

Creepy Cafetorium is a collection of quick stories involving a room that serves as the school's cafeteria and auditorium staffed by various non-human characters. The stories felt very immature, forced, and left an "it was okay, I guess" opinion. The potential was there, but the stories simply missed the mark for me. It felt like the authors were trying too hard to recreate a Sideways School-type feel.

Thank you, NetGalley and Andrews McMeel Publishing, for the opportunity to read an advance reading copy.

A delightful collection of interconnected, spooky-fun stories, packed with wacky characters and colorful illustrations.

This book has six colourfully illustrated, linked short stories in, all concerning visits to the world's most unusual school cafeteria. We start with a girl horrified when the jelly she loves so very much creates a doppelganger of her out of itself – and all her friends react to it and not her. It's a great premise let down by the author having no idea what to do with it. Next, the entire school gets infected by Covid and has to go home and self-isolate. Er, sorry, my bad – it actually gets infected by the repetitive tune the school pianist always insists on playing it – only for them to all be plagued by the sound of it when he decides to pack it in. Come story three and you realise there is a theme forming, of children allowed to be themselves, as a blabber-mouth story-teller and a malicious balloon seem peculiarly linked.

I guess that be-yourself theme is tied into why some characters are called 'they', for no reason at all. And yes, books still get marked down for gubbering up the language, like it or not, and the fourth tale here gets more messy as a result, featuring as it does a peculiar stoppage in play for everyone, alien invasion and a goat. Perhaps the most satisfying entry here comes next, where a kid mysteriously gains possession of a mix between Doctor Who's psychic paper and an excuse note – but a mix with its own consequences; although running that close is the closer of a shy girl being forced to speak out. So the collection, whether designed to talk about self-identity, does manage to hang all its stories on that hook, which makes for quite a distinctive reason behind them all. While quality isn't always outstanding, it's never bad, and only the he/she/it/they nonsense it ties itself into keeps it down at three and a half stars. Generally it's actually rather enjoyable.