The Otherwoods

Justine Pucella Winans's The Otherwoods is a spooky, funny adventure for 9 year olds about a kid who can see monsters and would really, really rather not.

What happens

River Rydell is twelve and a half, nonbinary, and has been seeing spirits and monsters for as long as they can remember. One lives under their bed right now. It's a six-foot mix of praying mantis and earwig, and River has named it Charles. (Naming it didn't help.)

The Otherwoods is a spirit world full of fog and nasty trees, and it keeps opening doorways for River. A gate. A school flowerbed. Their bedroom wardrobe!

River has rules for this. Ignore everything. Never let a monster know you can see it. Stay out of the woods. Nobody believes them anyway, not their parents and not the three therapists they've been sent to.

Then Avery Davis happens. She's kind and brave and she corrects the horrible history teacher who keeps using River's old name. She wants to be friends, and River has a very big crush. So when monsters drag Avery into The Otherwoods, River has to go in after her.

River's voice is the best thing about it. They're terrified and hilarious about it at the same time. On bad nights they walk across the bedroom with T-Rex arms, because nobody in a scary story ever gets hurt walking like a dinosaur. Who hasn't had a little trick like that for the dark?

There's also Pancakes, a very large grey cat who hisses at Charles. Every nervous kid needs a Pancakes.

The scares are proper scares, though. A spirit with no lips has eyes that drip blood, and it laughs blood all over River's desk. There are slimy monsters, a thing in the wardrobe with rows of bloodstained teeth, and trees with branches bent like broken bones. If your reader gets spooked at bedtime, this might be one for daytime reading.

If you've got a reader who loves a creepy story with plenty of jokes, they'll probably find a friend in River. So might any child who's ever felt like the odd one out.

What to read next

For another twelve-year-old who never asked to be the hero, try Darkmouth. The monsters there come through into a seaside town, and the boy expected to fight them ends up running away from a Minotaur.