Author/illustrator Remy Lai continues her playfully spooky streak (after Ghost Book) with another comically chilling, middle-grade illustrated novel, Read at Your Own Risk. "Once upon a time," Hannah introduces her ominous notebook, "I skipped assembly, snuck into the attic, awakened an evil, and now I'm h\a/unted." It was peer pressure (Mabel's, then Brian's, then Lisa's) that pushes Hannah upstairs for a game of Spirit of the Coin that goes terribly wrong. Day one ends with horrific nightmares and Hannah awakes on day two with an impossibly "blue, black, purple" ankle. Hannah has never been one to keep a diary, but she's also "never been about to be made to Rest In Pieces." Thus, she chronicles the next eight days of bloody accidents, brain worms, nosebleeds, avulsing teeth, and worse. The evil draws so near, it appears on the page: "I'm going to be TORTURED until I break the curse," Hannah writes. "Or until you meet your untimely end. Whichever comes first," scratchy red writing answers. Can she escape?
Lai cleverly and convincingly presents this account in a lined spiral-bound diary and fills the pages with eerily elongated black-and-white graphics, reminiscent of Tadahiro Uesugi's animated Coraline adaptation. The only added color is bloody red, strewn across pages in drips, drops, and in the threatening missives. Beyond the horror, Lai brilliantly interweaves romance, literary theory, and even can't-argue-with-that philosophy: "without the villain, there would be no OBSTACLES, no OPPORTUNITIES for the hero to become a hero." She delivers scarily good entertainment. --Terry Hong