The Puppet's Payback and Other Chilling Tales by Mary Downing Hahn

Abstract

Reviewed by: The Puppet's Payback and Other Chilling Tales by Mary Downing Hahn Kate Quealy-Gainer, Assistant Editor Hahn, Mary Downing The Puppet's Payback and Other Chilling Tales. Clarion/ Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2020 [192p] Trade ed. ISBN 9780358067320 $16.99 E-book ed. ISBN 9780358067344 $9.99 Reviewed from digital galleys Ad Gr. 4-6 Noted horror writer Hahn offers up ten spooky stories, three of which have been published in previous anthologies and all of which provide some satisfying, if not particularly inventive, scares. The most successful ones bring a bit of humor to the chills, with "The Thirteenth Pigeon" seeing the annoyingly rebellious protagonist turned into the titular bird, and "The Puppet's Payback" sentencing a harridan of a teacher to a lifetime with a rhyming puppet. Most of the tales, however, traffic in worn-out tropes, with two having nearly the same plot. Perhaps most valuable here is the accessibility in the straightforward first-person narration and the brevity of the stories, making this an easy pick for reluctant or struggling readers. Hahn's afterword discussing her reasons for writing ghost stories and some of her process as a writer might also inspire aspiring authors, and they'll particularly appreciate her inclusion of a tale she wrote in high school, the first draft (and in her own grading a generous B-) of one of the tales appearing here. Copyright © 2020 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois