Don’t make the mistake of thinking these stories are for children. They’re not (just in case the impressive cover art didn’t give it away). With this collection of short stories, children’s writer David Lubar has crossed into the world of YA fiction with thirteen tales that are vicious, creepy, and will give you the chills. While the stories themselves are pretty over the top, the feelings they inspire are genuine. The first story, “Running out of Air” will stick with anyone who has ever suffered a sadistic gym teacher or felt guilt about being a bystander. Other stories, like “Apparent Motives” and “Whoodoo” telegraph their endings, but knowing where the story is going doesn’t keep it from being pleasurable reading. There’s a grisly poetic justice to many of the stories. Smug, unpleasant, and malicious characters, such as Jake in “Every Drop”, Collin in “Patterns of Fear”, and Turk in “A Cart Full of Junk”, often meet violent ends, while underdogs frequently prevail. “Feelings” and “The Ex-Box” are gems in this collection, and deliver unexpected endings that will leave readers cheering.
Stylistically, the collection reminded me a bit of Alvin Schwartz’s Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark. Like Schwartz, Lubar tells his stories in spare language, and doesn’t waste words— they are sketched-in outlines that leave the reader to fill in the blanks with her imagination. Each story is preceded by black and white interior artwork, giving the book an extra punch.
It took a long time for Lubar to sell an editor on the idea of publishing a collection of horror stories for teens, as there was a general belief that short story collections don’t sell. Now that Extremities is out on the shelves, I hope we’ll see that change, and that Lubar has the opportunity to come out with a second collection as compelling as this one,
Contains: murder, suicide.
Reviewed by Kirsten Kowalewski