Read at Your Own Risk by Remy Lai
This one is sort of a graphic novel. If you have ever read Diary of a Wimpy Kid books, it’s like that but spooky instead of funny. The book features numerous drawings throughout, but not enough to truly qualify as a graphic novel. This is the journal of Hannah. She started this after she and her friends played a game to communicate with the dead. Now something is haunting and torturing Hannah, and she only has 8 days to live!
As Hannah journals her last few days, whatever is haunting her starts to creep into her journal as well. She is having full-on conversations with whatever this thing is. It is really creepy! Creepy like, teeth falling out! Oh, I did not like that! Little by little, Hannah talks about how all of this got started and what role she had in all of it. She talks about how she and her friends snuck up to the school’s attic (which is said to be haunted). That itself is freaky. And she slowly provides more and more information about what happened in the possibly haunted attic. Things continue to worsen for Hannah as the days pass. She has to figure out how to break this curse, or she will die!
It also ends with a sort of a fun spin. Don’t read on if you don’t want anything spoiled! The last page tells you that you, the reader, have been cursed, and the only way to break the curse is to write a story that keeps someone reading for 8 days. I thought that was sort of a fun way to end this book. It could be a great way to encourage kids to write! Maybe someone will read my blog for 8 days to break my curse!
I also liked this book because I have worked in many schools, and so many of them have ghost stories. My own school, where I work now, has a creepy tale about a fire that occurred back in the 1960s. I know the fire was real because I found photos! We just never had proof of who set our school on fire; there were suspects, but no one was ever punished for it, as far as I know. It would be interesting to hear about all the stories that are circulating around the school.
Three Out of Five Magical Coffee Cups
Literary Coffee 