Finished a couple more paper books for the library return slot.
The Phantom Limb by the late
William Sleator and
Ann Monticone, who according to the bio-blurb met while they were both working for the Boston Ballet, is another not-nostalgia read where I have a look at the newer/unread things written by one of my childhood favourite YA sci-fi writers.
This was a tween-level supernatural installment where the typical Sleator-ish science-y gimmick was the use of optical illusions.
Isaac, a socially isolated kid who's new in town due to having to move to cheaper furnishings due to his ailing mother's hospital bills, seems to have no friends at first and thus compensates by throwing himself into his optical illusion hobby, which is enhanced by the discovery of a
magic mirror box left over by the previous occupants.
It soon turns out that the magic mirror box itself contains a mysterious occupant, which it turns out to be trying to warn him of a very specific danger he has to thwart, which he does in part by making use of some of the other optical illusion tricks he's acquainted with.
The prose for this initially was very banal and flat, but the plot did pick up and make the story more compelling, with an increasingly creepy overtone to the mysterious happenings at his mother's hospital and the apparent robotic obedience of the hospital workers to whatever seemed to be behind the occurences, which was slowly and slightly spookily revealed as Isaac has to figure out the mysterious messages the mirror box occupant is sending him. And it was touching the way that Isaac was gradually able to gain the help of his befuddled but increasingly focused grandfather and an initially antagonistic kid at school.
Unfortunately, while this did have the seeds of a good idea and portions of it were carried out well, the overall execution was just barely above mediocre, IMHO.
Among the Dolls by
William Sleator was a supernatural kids' novel aimed at even younger readers, but it was actually quite good.
Vicky (apparently named for Sleator's own real-life sister, who also has a named cameo in TPL) receives an eerie dollhouse as an unwanted gift, and one day wakes up to find herself trapped inside as the dolls she'd been playing with start playing with her.
This was one of Sleator's early works, and managed to build and maintain the suspense quite nicely. There's also that
Toy Story gone wrong horror element of being nicer to your toys because you don't know what they're capable of, and as well as this valuable life lesson (which can presumably be extended to treating actual people decently as well), Vicky herself has to use ingenuity to figure out how the dollhouse works and positive personal interaction to win over an ally to help make her escape attempt.
The library's Tor Starscape paperback edition had several pages worth of reading guide activity/discussion group questions in the back, which indicates that someone thinks it's a good novel To Learn From, which I'm kind of inclined to agree.
Recommended if you're looking for a creepy read for any kids you know that might enjoy creepy reads.