Skip to main content

The Tanglewood Terror

By

The Tanglewood Terror
by Kurtis Scaletta
Knopf, 2011. 264 pgs. Fiction.

The Tanglewood Terror is a hilarious horror story and no one gets nearly as horrified as I think they should when glow-in-the-dark mushrooms take over their town. Eric Parrish and his little brother Brian find the first of the glowing mushrooms in a field behind their house and become quickly concerned that besides making for an interesting science project, the mushrooms may be of the same variety that destroyed the town of Keatston, a colonial village built where Tanglewood now stands. When the mushrooms take over the Tanglewood Owls' football field ("Who's going to win? Whooo? Whoo?") even the loss in a championship game takes second place to the encroaching fungi. Can Eric, Brian, and his new friend Mandy, an escapee from a too-strict boarding school, have to figure out how the Keatston Meetinghouse survived the first mushroom plague at the same time they are caring for a temperamental pig, trying to deal with the boys' frequently absentee adolescent-like father, and evading the law, aka, their mothers. There is so much going on in The Tanglewood Terror that the whole is deliciously greater than the sum of its parts. Themes of maturity, forgiveness, sibling relationships, religion, and historicity are interwoven with the sinister, suspenseful action of a truly gripping read.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Review: The Factory

By
The Factory By Catherine Egan New York, NY : Scholastic Inc., 2025. Fiction. 306 pages.  Thirteen-year-old Asher Doyle has been invited to join the Factory, a secretive research facility in the desert which ostensibly extracts renewable energy from the electromagnetic fields of its young recruits. But Asher soon realizes something sinister is going on. Kids are getting sick. The adults who run the Factory seem to be keeping secrets. And the extraction process is not only painful and exhausting, but existentially troubling. Asher makes a handful of new friends who help him with an investigation that turns into a resistance, which turns into...a cliffhanger! The Factory is a page-turning sci-fi with multidimensional characters, an intriguing plot, and refreshingly straight-forward writing. Egan weaves in detail about climate crises and social unrest, making the story's dystopian setting feel rich and plausible. With its sophisticated themes and accessible storytelling, I would recomm...
Post a Comment
Read more

Review: Fowl Play

By
  Fowl Play By Kristin O'Donnell Tubb New York: Katherine Tegen Books, 2024. Fiction 277 pages. Still reeling from her beloved uncle's death, Chloe Alvarez is comforted and confused when at his last will and testament reading, Uncle Will gifts her his African Grey parrot, Charlie. Charlie has a robust vocabulary and loves to make Alexa requests for her favorite songs, but when she starts saying things like, "homicide," and "cyanide," Chloe becomes convinced that Uncle Will may have met his demise by murder instead of a genetic disease, as was previously thought. Ultimately, bringing in her brother, Grammy, and Uncle Frank (and of course Charlie,) Chloe's ragtag and adoring family support her search for answers ---going on stakeouts, engaging in fast pursuits, and searching for clues. But as the suspects stack up and the mystery grows, Chole will learn that the process of death and grieving is complicated, and in the end her Uncle Will's words that, ...
Post a Comment
Read more

National Geographic Book of Animal Poetry

By DeeDee
National Geographic Book of Animal Poetry Edited by J. Patrick Lewis National Geographic, 2012, 183 p. Poetry In this beautiful poetry collection, the National Children's Poet Laureate, J. Patrick Lewis, has teamed up with the amazing photographers at National Geographic. The result is 200 poems about animals, all illustrated with stunning nature photography.  The poems are well chosen and include rhyming, free verse, and shape poetry. Some of the poems are funny, many are contemplative and all are nicely typeset on top of the full color photographs. One of my favorites is a shape poem about flamingos, with a photograph of a flock of flamingos which seem to be standing the the shape of a flamingo (how did they do that?).  Lewis ends the collection with a brief but interesting section about writing animal poetry.  This selection is sure to turn any animal lover into a poetry lover.
Post a Comment
Read more