August 5, 2025 by Sourcebooks Young Readers
E ARC Provided by Edelweiss Plus
Nico is being "dumped" with his abuela in Puerto Rico for the summer as his parents try a second trial separation. He's glad to be with his cousins, Kira and Nessi, who are experiencing family problems of their own. Their grandmother's small village, Quebradillas, is a great place for the three to run around. Nico, an aspiring filmmaker, has recently applied to LaGuardia High School for their arts program, but has been put on the waitlist after what he considered a horrible interview. Since there is a video essay contest run by a popular director who went to school with his father, Nico has decided to work on a documentary about Puerto Rico during his visit. He workshops ideas with his cousins, especially when he sees the poverty and unemployment all around him. He starts interviewing relatives and neighbors, but when the subject of his recurring nightmares seems to come to life, he switches gears. Long traumatized by having been in a storm when he was young, Nico often sees a wind witch in his dreams, and thinks he has hallucinated seeing her on the plane. When all three see what is later determined to be a Puerto Rico version of a chupacabra (more like a bat, with glowing red eyes!), he feels a need to investigate. At first, the cousins are afraid of the creature, often called the Shadow beast, but when it saves Nessi and a toddler from falling over a cliff, they reconsider. Abuela Lina takes the children up into the mountains, where relevant information about their Taino family heritage is shared, and they learn a lot about the life and legends of the indigenous people of the island. How does all of this feed into the current mystery of the chupacabra? And will it all make a good film?
Strengths: Nico isn't thrilled to be going away for the summer, but mainly because his parents' marital problems are bugging him, and he is generally grumpy after his school interview. A generally grumpy but resilient main character is somewhat hard to find, and I enjoyed that he was able to spend time with his cousins, work on a project, and have some interests that got him outside of his head. The depiction of everyday life in Puerto Rico is something that I would love to see more of; there are not a lot of books set there. The explanation of indigenous culture and history was interesting as well. The fantasy elements make sense, and help drive the plot. Abuela Lina is a great character, and I wish we could see more of her, even though her hands off approach gives the kids more room to venture out on their own.
Weaknesses: There are so many culturally connected fantasy novels and, at my school, they don't circulate well. Something like Cartaya's Marcus Vega Doesn't Speak Spanish, however, does. I would love to see a realistic fiction story set in Puerto Rico. The parts of the story set in the village were fun to read, and shed a lot of light on some of the problems this US Territory has had.
What I really think: The combination of visiting a grandparent for the summer and learning that the family has magical connections is a tried and true formula. This is a good choice for readers who enjoyed Maunakea's Lea and the Fire Goddess, Rivera's Cece Rios and the Desert of Souls, Cole's The Empty Place, or McMann's Going Wild series.
August 6th, 2025 by Clarion Books
E ARC provided by Edelweiss Plus
Possibly no longer being published. 7/6/25
This author's 2018 Nightbooks has done very well in my library, and was even turned into a Netflix movie. Since the storyline of that title involved stringing together a number of scary stories, I was not surprised to see a collections of stories with illustrations, ala Schwartz's 1981 Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, from White. There are some stories with an urban legend feel to them, and others that have a creepy but somewhat funny, unhinged feel, like Lubar's Lawn Weenies books. The innovation in this collection, however, is dividing the stories into scary, scarier, and scariest. While I'm not a fan of scary stories, and don't normally find them to be all that scary, these were definitely clever, and do hinge on some innate fears that tweens have. "The Early Bus" is fairly poignant, and some like "The Shell" turn to popular horror topics like children turning into zombies. "The Color of Your Eyes", in the "Darker Still" section, was intriguing. Many of these have unresolved endings, so a lot of the fear factor has to do with what the reader imagines happens after the story is over. There's a bit of a gross out factor with entries like "Meat". Bonus points for a creepy Santa tale, and a snow day gone wrong. Jialun's illustrations add a bit more eeriness.
Of course, while 6th and 7th graders will love this and ask if the author has more, 8th graders will publicly state that this wasn't scary at all, even if they thought it was. Of course, the fright factor is always upped by glow in the dark covers, especilly if there's a menacing hand like on Allen's Only If You Dare.
This has an appropriately dark cover, and since my students will read just about ANY book of scary short stories, I will add this to my collection that includes Lubar's Lawn Weenies, Allen's Once They See You, San Souci's Dare to Be Scared, Rissi's Hide and Don't Seek, Priestley's Tales of Terror, Graves' Midnight Library (2008- wow. Gotten my money's worth out of these!), and Stine's Stinetinglers series.
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