Give Me Something Good to Eat
by D W Gillespie (Author)
Perfect for fans of Hocus Pocus and Stranger Things, this middle grade debut tells the story of a boy who travels into an alternate version of his Halloween-obsessed town to save his sister from an evil witch and free the town from the witch’s curse.
Fear comes home.
Welcome to Pearl, a town obsessed with Halloween: the spooky decorations, the costumes, the candy. No one seems to notice that every October 31st, a kid goes missing. Mason Miller does, though. Somehow he’s the only one who has any memory the person existed at all.
When Mason’s sister, Meg, vanishes while they’re trick-or-treating, Mason and his friends are pulled into an underworld where monsters roam the streets. They need to fight the evil taking over Pearl, but none of them know the true danger they're facing.
Meg has been stolen by a witch who has no plans to let her go. Shadows of death curl around trees and behind doorways as Mason must use every ounce of bravery he has . . . or be haunted forever with the memory of a sister that only he remembers.
Locate at a Library Near You WorldCat is the world's largest library catalog, helping you find library materials online.
Find books about:
Kirkus
An immersive, well-imagined world with plenty of spooky bits.
Publishers Weekly
A decades-old witch's spell holds a small town in peril in this sardonic and terrifying thriller by Gillespie (One by One, for adults), a children's debut. Seventh grader Mason Miller, an Evil Dead enthusiast and resident of Pearl, N.C., is suspicious of his town's fanatical devotion to Halloween night. Even close confidant Serge--a charismatic, athletic foil to Mason's brooding nerd persona--shrugs off Mason's insistence that each year a child disappears and is scrubbed from the town's collective memory. When Mason's nine-year-old sister Meg is snatched by a scarecrow, the boys, along with two other classmates, give chase and find themselves pulled into a gruesome monster realm known as UnderPearl. The quartet's race to find Meg before she succumbs to a witch's spell lends itself to an effective and well-worn adventure narrative with a thoughtfully rendered resolution that gives an otherwise familiar tale some unexpected panache. Gillespie's writing shines, however, in the shiver-inducing descriptions of the ghouls the team encounter, including "oddly cute" skinless blobs, a reluctant pumpkin-headed henchman, and, in one showstopping scene of cosmic horror, eyeless triplets. Serge is described as having "dark-brown" skin; Mason reads as white. Ages 8-12. Agent: Aimee Ashcraft, Brower Literary. (Aug.)
Copyright 2024 Publishers Weekly, LLC Used with permission.
Review quotes
"Evil witches and terrifying alternate realities? New fear unlocked." —Lindsay Currie, NYT bestselling author of SCRITCH SCRATCH
"Delivers delicious scares!" —Wendy Parris, author of FIELD OF SCREAMS
"With deliciously spooky imagery, a creepy, cursed town, ghoulish monsters, and children that go missing on the scariest night of the year, GIVE ME SOMETHING GOOD TO EAT is like a sack full of Halloween candy!" —Ally Russell, author of IT CAME FROM THE TREES
JUV018000 - Juvenile Fiction | Horror
Witches
Missing persons
Blessing and cursing
Paranormal fiction
Monsters
Halloween
Novels
Monster fiction
