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When eleven-year-old Mina is banned from screen time, she sneaks out of the house with her game console and takes refuge at the mall.
Mina is so focused on her game that before she knows it, the mall is closed, deserted and locked with her stuck inside. But...is she really alone?
Mina searches for a way out, all the while feeling as if she's being watched. To her horror, the store mannequins come to life and chase her down, determined to make her one of their own.
Gr 4-6--In this series of standalone, spine-tingling horror stories, young readers experience different literary devices common to horror novels. Each book is written by a different author and run the gamut of tropes from ghost stories to possessed animals to evil mannequins. This collection offers a variety of stories that would appeal to a range of horror readers, so one thing to note is the consistency in writing style and scare level fluctuates quite dramatically due to the different authors. For example, What's in the Walls? is a simpler school story akin to "Bailey School Kids" series when compared to the intense ghost story in Dial If You Dare. The books are on the short side and would make excellent read-alouds in group settings. VERDICT A nice supplement to libraries with an active "Goosebumps" collection.
Copyright 2025 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
Pierrette Dubé grew to love children's books at the same time as her own kids did. And soon she started writing her own. She has now written more than forty picture books and several short novels. Many of her books have won awards, including the Quebec Booksellers' Award for Children's Literature in 2015 for La petite truie, le vélo et la lune, the English edition of which, The Little Pig, the Bicycle, and the Moon, was a Bank Street College of Education's Best Children's Books of the Year selection in 2019. Bad Bot is her second middle-grade horror novel. She lives in Saint-Lambert, Québec.
Vigg is a self-taught author, illustrator and sculptor. Born in Ottawa, he grew up around the world in France, Morocco, the Ivory Coast, Haiti and Switzerland. His award-winning work is published in major newspapers, such as the Washington Post and the New York Times. He has written over twenty children's books, including the autobiographical Ma maison-tête, the original French edition of Lost Inside My Head. Recently he has developed a practice in sculpture to explore the third dimension of his graphic universe. He lives and works in the village of Saint-Denis-sur-Richelieu in Québec.
David Warriner grew up in the UK and escaped to Quebec right after graduating from Oxford. A professional translator for nearly two decades, David nurtures a healthy passion for Quebec fiction and has translated a range of fiction, nonfiction and children's fiction titles by Quebec authors for British and Canadian publishers. He lives in Penticton, British Columbia.