Member Reviews
I didn't realize these were incomplete stories, just excerpts from other books. It made it difficult to get invested. I wouldn't go and purchase a whole stack of books to get the full stories just from what was available to sample here. I wish the description had said a word about that.
I loved the diverse edge of your seat stories in this book and would read it again. I loved how the stories were scary but not over the top scary. I gave the book five stars because I like scary books that are wow and this one has that wow factor.
Nice collection of not-too-scary stories for young readers. Great for fall and Halloween. The cover is not incredibly capturing, but the stories are entertaining, particularly for children.
I downloaded this book without knowing that it was a sampler. The bookpage on NetGalley should have mentioned that it was a sampler. It’s annoying to get into a book, and then discover that it’s the first three chapters only.
Still, I dutifully read through the sample chapters and here is my feedback:
Small Spaces by Katherine Arden: An 11-year-old gifted girl, Olivia, who is motherless, meets a crazy woman at the local pond. The woman is just about to throw a book into the water. Olivia rescues the book and takes it home, inviting horror into her life.
This one took too long to get started. There was far too much background, and the inciting incident didn’t happen until the fag end of the sampler. By the time we arrive at the pond, the three chapters are over.
Hush-a-Bye by Jody Lee Mott: Two young girls, sisters, find a broken doll head and take it to their trailer park home. This one was written in the first person PoV of the older sister, Lucy, and had a strong voice and I would have liked to read it. The description of the trailer home was done very well.
Too Bright to See by Kyle Lukoff: Best friends Moira and Bug are getting ready for school. Moira is interested in boys, make-up and fashion, like all teenagers. But Bug has too much to worry about to think of any of that stuff. For one, she believes there’s a ghost haunting her huge mansion, her uncle has just died, and she’s hiding the biggest secret of all: she’s transgender.
This book was written in the first person PoV of Bug, and it was really cool. Another one I would have liked to read.
The Hiddenseek by Nate Cernosek: A brother and a sister have to play a dangerous game of hide-and-seek and win in order to save themselves and other children who have been taken if they would like to rescue their family from the alternate reality in which they have been plunged.
Brackenbeast by Kate Alice Marshall, The Hungry Ghosts by Miguel Flores and Kingston and the Magician’s Lost and Found by Rucker Moses and Theo Gangi were all bursting with fantasy elements, which is my least preferred genre. I just skimmed through these pages.
With a name like Spine-Tingling Tales, I expected Horrow, unmixed with any other genre, but in these last three stories, the fantasy elements overruled the horror.
Some interesting books coming out – I will be requesting a few of these titles when they're up on NetGalley.
A sampler, it's good if I able to read the whole stories. Though, the plots are interesting and kinda unique.
DNF @ 17%. I was really interested in reading all of these stories. Although this was not clear on the description, this book is only a sampler, providing a few chapters from each story before abruptly moving on to the next one.
The beginnings of some spooky short stories for the middle school sect. I'd be interested to read more, beyond the first chapter or so of each. A few of the stories, it was really frustrating when the sampler ended. Using these as read-alouds for a first chapter Friday would be good.
I really enjoyed these and it is a great read around Halloween time for kids of all ages. I think the stories were just scary enough for kids and adults, but not so scary that you have to stop reading because you're terrified.
I really enjoyed reading this sampler of Penguin spooky titles for young readers! Personally, I’m very excited to read Small Spaces, The Hungry Ghosts, and Brackenbeast. I really wanted to see what happened next with Small Spaces! I had not previously heard about Too Bright to See and The Hiddenseek, but I enjoyed them both! I will definitely be adding these new titles to my TBR and look forward to the release of all of the books. Thank you so much to Penguin Kids and Netgalley for the opportunity to read the Spine-Tingling Tales for Young Readers sampler!
This book contains some interesting stories for middle grades readers. The stories are well written and interesting to most in this age group I especially enjoyed the young characters and their stories of home lives that have challenges, siblings with issues, and friends that are typical of the age group. Some of the stories have no ending and could be used by a creative young person or teacher as a prompt for a writing activity where the young person adds to the story. Others would be used as a good activity to promote talking about middle school things like friendship, bullying, family issues, etc. An especially good book to use in the fall spook season. Thanks to #Spine-TinglingTalesfor Young ReadesbyPenguinKids#NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review this book.