Read at Your Own Risk

July 8, 2024
Seventh grader Hannah Lee finds herself cursed after sneaking out of an assembly to the school’s supposedly haunted attic with her friends. Constructed as Hannah’s illustrated sketch diary, which is filled with drawings by Lai (Ghost Book) rendered in b&w with blood-red accents, Hannah notes all the strange things that begin happening to her following the game. In biology class, a knife slips out of her hand and lands “smack-dab in the middle of my forehead,” while further investigation of an itch in her gums reveals centipedes “scratching my jawbone tingly and torturous.” When the sinister force at play starts communicating with her via her journal, Hannah must find a way to expunge the evil presence or face dire consequences. But even as Hannah investigates, the curse taunts her: “You ungrateful brat.... Without the villain, there would be no obstacles, no opportunities for the hero to become a hero.” Lai’s fast-paced, body-horror-centric tale sets up an accessible and eerie mystery through which the protagonist grapples with spine-tingling terrors, uncovers previously hidden personal potential, and forms stronger connections. Character skin tones reflect the white of the page. Ages 8–12. Agent: Jim McCarthy, Dystel, Goderich & Bourret.

Starred review from June 15, 2024
A young girl finds herself plagued by a dark spirit. Seventh grader Hannah Lee and her friends skip an assembly for children's horror author Leon Star and instead go to the school's supposedly haunted attic, where they attempt to contact the spirits. Soon after, Hannah realizes she's unwittingly released an evil curse. Now she must contend with bad luck such as accidentally being skewered by a scalpel during science class. Hannah suspects that Leon Star might know what's happening and seeks help; unfortunately, he tells her she doesn't have much time before she'll succumb to the curse. This inventive tale is presented in journal format as Hannah chronicles her troubles in a mix of doodlelike scrawls and diary entries. Even the pages of her notebook aren't safe from the malevolent spirit, who often interrupts her musings and responds in red ink. Readers will find much to enjoy in this fast-paced but extremely macabre tale. Body horror abounds. The book's pages become spattered with blood as Hannah's teeth fall out; later her dentist tells her that her gums are overrun with silverfish. Characters who initially seem merely unsettling become shockingly sinister-looking at times. Lai plays with the form and function of language, adding action and sound effects and deftly tying narrative and visuals together. In the cartoonish illustrations, characters have skin the white of the page. An ominous yet irresistible story that will delight and distress in equal measure. (Horror. 8-12)

COPYRIGHT(2024) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

August 1, 2024
Grades 3-6 After ditching an assembly to play a spirit-summoning game in the school's attic, seventh-grader Hannah discovers she's been cursed. What's worse, she brought it on herself. A record of her woes through descriptions, drawings, and dialogue, Hannah's spiral notebook journal tells this wickedly funny horror tale. As her miseries mount daily (skinned knees, lost teeth, maybe actual bugs in her brain), Hannah admits she sneakily manipulated the game to scare her friends; now a chatty, snarky evil spirit is threatening her via red-inked notebook entries. Hannah's frantic research about past victims reveals she has just eight days to undo the curse. Critically acclaimed author-illustrator Lai's art is gleefully grisly--Hannah's black-line drawings show characters as creepily skull-faced, with eyes as scribbled black holes over black mouths set with teeth of pointy white pickets. Droplets and smears of red splotched onto the page are persuasively bloody. Both over-the-top silly and genuinely scary, this graphic tale of a curse ending in a classic twist is preternaturally perfect for readers looking to play around with the horror genre.

COPYRIGHT(2024) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

September 1, 2024
Though others may call it "an accident...I know the word for someone who goes to science class to dissect earthworms and gets sliced in the forehead by an earthworm-juice-encrusted blade and has to get two stitches: CURSED." Middle-school protagonist Hannah Lee relates in her journal all the things that have gone supernaturally wrong or been left unexplained over the course of eight days when she is "hexed by ancient evil." Her nose keeps bleeding, her front tooth falls out (the dentist finds silverfish in her gums, shudder), her brother falls into a coma. She records each occurrence in her diary...and the malevolent spirit begins to write back. Lai's (Ghost Book, rev. 9/23) visual style -- incorporating copious, plot-furthering illustrations within the main text -- is here displayed on spiral notebook-looking lined pages with spiky, sketchlike art ("by" Hannah), mostly black and white with some splotches of blood red, capturing the increasingly weird, and sometimes genuinely frightening, goings-on. Allusions to the power of storytelling and an impending author's visit are threaded throughout, both used as foreshadowing to an attention-grabbingly eerie ending. Elissa Gershowitz

(Copyright 2024 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)

August 16, 2024

Gr 3-5-Bugs crawling under skin and teeth falling out are the stuff of nightmares, making them perfect fodder for this heavily illustrated horror title. Readers follow Hannah after she is cursed by an ominous entity who lives in her school's abandoned library. She documents a series of freak accidents through increasingly frantic journal entries and as she attempts to rid herself of the hex, the entity begins to write back to her. Lai has already shown a talent for both humor and horror for middle graders, and this title is a natural fit for her talents. She strips down her usual warm and goofy illustrative style, as seen in Pawcasso and Pie in the Sky, for menacing doodles featuring vacant, black eyes, sharp teeth, and blood stains. Yet in both illustrations and text, she avoids tilting into overly scary territory, using comedic breaks and outlandish situations to maintain a balance for skittish readers. There are some logic jumps and missing details that might trip up the most observant, but the story's chaotic energy will inspire them to keep those pages turning. VERDICT For tweens seeking "Diary of a Wimpy Kid" meets Tim Burton, this is an enjoyable scare that may prompt readers to write their own.-Alexandra Quay

Copyright 2024 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

July 1, 2024
Though others may call it "an accident...I know the word for someone who goes to science class to dissect earthworms and gets sliced in the forehead by an earthworm-juice-encrusted blade and has to get two stitches: CURSED." Middle-school protagonist Hannah Lee relates in her journal all the things that have gone supernaturally wrong or been left unexplained over the course of eight days when she is "hexed by ancient evil." Her nose keeps bleeding, her front tooth falls out (the dentist finds silverfish in her gums, shudder), her brother falls into a coma. She records each occurrence in her diary...and the malevolent spirit begins to write back. Lai's (Ghost Book, rev. 9/23) visual style -- incorporating copious, plot-furthering illustrations within the main text -- is here displayed on spiral notebook looking lined pages with spiky, sketchlike art ("by" Hannah), mostly black and white with some splotches of blood red, capturing the increasingly weird, and sometimes genuinely frightening, goings-on. Allusions to the power of storytelling and an impending author's visit are threaded throughout, both used as foreshadowing to an attention-grabbingly eerie ending.

(Copyright 2024 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)