Scary School....looks like a great book for reluctant young readers

This is probably the most important book review of the summer…..and I haven’t  read the book! My ten year old daughter is a bit of reluctant reader. Oh, she has her head in a book all the time so long as it’s a comic book, graphic novel or an art book. She’s highly visual and a younger sister to a “super student and super reader," sometimes a tough act to follow as a little sis. She doesn’t  always see books or text heavy reading as “her department” in our family.

However, when I saw my ten year old absorbed in Scary School by Derek the Ghost….I took note. Scary School is a chapter book illustrated by Scott M. Fischer. As my daughter tells me, each chapter is told by a different member of the school community (we grown-ups know this as a multi-voice novel). The story was highly interesting, contained great graphics that my illustration-lovin kid likes and………led to a “secret chapter” that ends the book at the book’s website: www.scaryschool.com.

When my daughter went to the Scary School website she had to take a quiz on the book to gain access to the secret and final chapter of the story. This was quite enticing to my reader and she was excited to get to the website where she was laughing out loud at what she read there. There are lots of additional cool places for ten and eleven year olds to visit at the site: games, links, tour of the “school”, tour of the book, about the author and more. Even better, this is a book that appeals to boy and girl readers.

Now that my daughter has finished the book I’m going to grab it and see why it’s so cool. I hope other parentss of reluctant readers will find a way to introduce this book to their child(ren). I’d love to know what they think.

Scary School Book 2 comes out in June 2012. My daughter is already making sure that I know that so we can get it. I love hearing this from her!

Kent, D. Scary School. New York: Harper Collins Children, 2011. Print