The Dead Boys by Royce Buckingham
My rating: 4/5 cats
this book is not about the band. it is about a tree that eats young boys. a common mistake, but there is not really going to be any crossover appeal.
for some reason, it didn’t occur to me when i put in for a reviewer copy of this book that it was a children’s book. so not only am i getting no respite from my required-school-reading teen spree, but i am actually regressing. which is not a terrible thing, just unexpected.
this would be an excellent story to read aloud to children for halloween. not only is it good and spooky, but the kid is wonderfully resourceful and there is an excellent scene involving a spider sure to produce a loud and ewwwww-y reaction.
the basic story is about a tree that scoops twelve-year-old boys up into its branches and slowly drains the life-force from them. (i am so not going to make a joke about greg’s mom here) it is like the revenge of the giving tree.
“oh, you want to make a canoe out of my trunk, do you?? well, i want to suck your vitality from you, and keep you prisoner in a state of suspended animation for decades. we cool??”
but there are plenty of creepy trees in history, so this one is in good company.
a good spooky read for kids, but the adult reader has got to ask how a twelve-year-old boy in town for three days gets to the bottom of a mystery that local police never even considered was there to be solved. what else are they doing in a small, radioactive desert town??
overall a good read (dot com) for young boys, especially, with some great illustrations at the start of each chapter of the branches getting ever closer to the fleeing boy.
but that’s still a “no” on the stiv bators. sorry, kiddies.
read my book reviews on goodreads
