Family Valued book report

By Craig Brownlie

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"Everybody burns"

We here at the Family Valued newspaper warren, free-form gardens, and 24-hour cafeteria have randomly selected a 10-year-old from among the one immediately available.

Who is this David Lubar guy?

Bwa-ha-ha-ha. He is a horror writer. He writes scary stories.

The kind that keep you up at night?

No, actually I don't get kept up by creepy stories and usually I don't have nightmares if I read them before bed. Because I am a horror fan. Because I love scary books, movies, and things like that. I've read In the Land of the Lawn Weenies and Other Misadventures and Invasion of the Road Weenies and Other Warped and Creepy Tales. They're actually collections of short stories.

What's your favorite story?

Hard to say. There're a whole bunch of creepy ones. One of the really creepy ones was "Sun." It opens with a boy talking about the beach and getting sunburned. Most people can stop getting burned by putting on sunscreen, but that's never really worked for him. A new kid enters his class and she looks nice. So, after school, he and a friend visit her. The new kid says come on in, sit down, let's talk. The friend asks the new kid have you ever had any bad sunburn. The new kid says no. The boy asks have you had any sunburns. The new kid says no. The boy says, "Everybody burns, everybody burns," because he's sensitive because he has a really bad one. The new kid says I don't and her skin starts flaking off. The new kid turns into a lizard and attacks the boy and eats him. Then the lizard jumps onto the friend and that's the end of the story.

Just so other people can decide if David Lubar is too scary for them, how scary are his stories?

They are very scary compared to Goosebumps. I like him as much as Ray Bradbury and H.G. Wells.