“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.
This article appears in Jun 28 – Jul 4, 2006.
