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CM . . . .
Volume VII Number 3 . . . . October 6, 2000
excerpts: Yeah, I know Doc, I look terrible and don't smell any better. But you would too, if you stayed on the go like I do, had a peg sticking out of either side of your neck and this crazy scar across your forehead. You'd think they could have told me to use cocoa butter on the place after they took the stitches out, but naw, no way. They didn't care if I had a face like a train track. No meat off their nose. ("Personality Problem" by Joe. R. Lonsdale, p. 99)Edo van Belkom, himself an award-winning author of "horror" literature, is the perfect person to have selected these 15 "creepy" stories, 12 of them never before published. Most of the international group of authors will likely be unknown to most Canadian adolescents unless they are regular fans of the horror genre; however, two of the names should be familiar to readers of mainstream YA fiction, Monica Hughes and Tim Wynne-Jones. Naturally, the stories, which generally focus on adolescents and normally range in length from 10-14 pages, are designed to provide teen readers with that frisson of fear, and, in the main, they accomplish their goal very well. Two, "Personality Problem" by Joe R. Lonsdale, and "In the Heart of November" by Scott Nicholson, even manage to inject some humor into a dark genre more associated with the "Twilight Zone" than with laughter. The closing five pages provide a brief biographical paragraph about each of the story contributors, including their website URLs where available. Highly Recommended. Dave Jenkinson teaches courses in children's and adolescent literature in the Faculty of Education, the University of Manitoba.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS FOR THIS ISSUE - October 6, 2000.
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