Amity
I love these little moss piglets and I appreciate that Doug did his research before making a decision. Perhaps he will become the first tardigrade librarian on the moon! 5 big hairy wolf spiders out of 5.
Pretty much any book featuring capybaras is an automatic five stars. I mean, the capybara wore a bow tie! How could you get better than that?
Contractually obligated to like basically any book with kittens. Lovely illustrations, but the rhythm of the text is a bit clunky when doing a read-aloud.
Still: kittens.
Cute illustrations and I loved the use of unique opposite match-ups that were sprinkled in with more typical examples!
One of my favorite storytime reads. It has everything I like in books (goats and a glittery cover)
Feel your emotions, Kevin, they are valid <3
Also I want whatever Glitter Soda is. Is it just literally soda with glitter in it? I am also fine with that.
I prefer this Chrstine tbh:
And I definitely prefer this Michael:
So while I appreciate the late Vizzini's work, and thought that this was a decent adaptation with nice art, I think I'll just listen to the cast recording instead. 2.5 grey oblong pills with quantum nanotechnology CPUs out of 5.
Being a huge fan of YA fiction and horror, you would think this would be an easy sell to me. However, I feel I'm often let down by YA horror novels, so this was a pleasant surprise.
As with any anthology, there are stronger stories than others, but it was rather solid throughout. There are a few that didn't work for me personally, but I'd rather highlight my favorites:
The Birds of Azalea Street (Nova Ren Suma) What a great opening! Someone left a post-it note in my library book rating each story, and rightly gave this one a 4.5/5
Hide and Seek (Megan Shepherd) Strong lady friendships and a female protag trying to outwit death? 1000000% up my alley.
The Girl Without a Face (Marie Lu) Creepy and sad, Lu naturally doesn't disappoint.
Stitches (A.G. Howard) I honestly think this should have been the final story in the collection, because it might have been my favorite and obviously this book exists only for me.
While I was pretty aware of most of the inspirations (some are exceedingly obvious, others not so much), I do like that they included them at the end of each story. It provided a fun guessing game as well as recommended movie and book titles to check out if you liked a particular story, and I am all for inspiring future generations to become horror junkies. 4/5
