Defy the Dark

July 1, 2013

Gr 8 Up-Sixteen established YA authors contribute short stories to this collection, which also includes a bonus story by the winner of the Defy the Dark New Author Contest, sponsored by HarperTeen and Figment. Each story takes place either at night or in the dark, which invites a fair share of overtly scary or creepy tales. In Carrie Ryan's "Almost Normal," a group of teens witnesses a zombie invasion from atop a roller coaster, and in Rachel Hawkins's urban-legend-inspired "Eyes in the Dark," a teen couple on a romantic interlude in the woods are hunted by monsters. Some stories are disturbing for other reasons. Sarah Ockler's "The Moth and the Spider" focuses on a girl writing a suicide note. Others are more sweet than scary, such as Aprilynne Pike's "Nature," in which a romance blooms in a future society that has strict career paths. In Malinda Lo's "Ghost Town," a girl gets revenge on a classmate with some ghostly help; Christine Johnson's "Shadowed" closes with a twist; Tessa Gratton's "This Was Ophelia" explores a courtship between a girl masquerading as a man and the boy who loves her as her male persona; and Dia Reeves revisits Portero through the eyes of an outsider in "The Dark Side of the Moon." As with any collection, some selections are stronger than others, but with contributions that range from frightening to romantic, action-driven to lyrical, there should be something here for everyone.-Gretchen Kolderup, New York Public Library

Copyright 2013 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 1, 2013
Sixteen darkly alluring stories relate horrid and extraordinary events that can occur only in the absence of light. Each uniquely eerie, goose bump-raising tale confidently journeys into the unknown, and almost every one has a thread of teen romance. The quietly disturbing opening story, Courtney Summers' "Sleepstalk," tells of a girl so obsessively in love that she stalks her sleepwalking ex-boyfriend. She feels she can't exist without him and will make sure he doesn't exist without her. In Dia Reeves' "The Dark Side of the Moon," a town is perforated by fissures through which monsters enter. The well-adjusted citizens know how to battle everything but the night trolley, which goes to a place from which no one has ever returned alive. One young man, however, intent on impressing his girlfriend, takes the ride of his life. Four friends find themselves stuck on a roller coaster in "Almost Normal," by Carrie Ryan, awaiting the zombie takeover of their town. Before the gory finale, the teens ponder the end of the mundane and the beginning of eternal hungering, craving oblivion. Christine Johnson offers the heartbreaking "Shadowed," in which a cursed girl must never leave the dark lest her shadow murder her. This thick volume should conjure the heebie-jeebies for even the most experienced of supernatural connoisseurs. (Supernatural/short stories. 14 & up)

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June 1, 2013
Grades 8-12 This spirited collection counts on the bewitching, tantalizing qualities of darknessat night, down a mineshaft, or artificially manufactured in a spaceshipto set the stage for 17 original short stories by popular YA authors, including Aprilynne Pike and Beth Revis. Some are of the spooky variety, like Ghost Town, by Malinda Lo, about a ghost-hunting prank that turns into a real ghost encounter, and others are sweetly touching, like Saundra Mitchell's Now Bid Time Return, the story of two teenagers, separated by centuries, who are brought together thanks to the aurora borealis, some paranormal photography, and a time portal in Norway. Still others take advantage of familiar legends. Myra McEntire's Naughty or Nice, for instance, is the story of two friends falling in love . . . while battling the Krampus. The menace of darkness in these stories is mostly slight and a little predictable, more campfire shivers than real danger, but that's precisely the appeal. Romance, unsurprisingly, flourishes in the dark, and there's no absence of it here, either; with only a few notable exceptions, each story has the promise of a happily ever after.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)

July 1, 2013
In this collection of seventeen original stories, wildly varied aspects and interpretations of "dark" are explored. The common thread is rather effective, even as the mix of stories address everything from monsters to nightmares to romance. Most thought-provoking here are the multiple understandings of the distinct quiet--and sometimes the horror--that can only be found in the dark.

(Copyright 2013 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)