You're never too old to go trick-or-treating. That's a core belief for 13-year-old Esther Gold, the main character of this middle-grade debut from Fink, creator of the popular podcast Welcome to Nightvale. Esther's practically obsessed with Halloween was the theme of her bat mitzvah, after all t her parents think she is too old for trick-or-treating. And when she sneaks out with her best friend, Augustín, anyway, things do not go as planned. They encounter an eerie Halloween moon and a queen who can put everyone in their neighborhood to sleep, except for a dentist and the school bully. Fink folds in Esther's fear of change for some nice emotional grounding, but being trapped in a dream forever with no possibility of ever growing up is even scarier. There's plenty of humor to complement the creepy atmosphere, with monsters wearing monster costumes, scary ice cream truck drivers, and a dentist who wasn't always a dentist. Kids captivated by Katherine Arden's Small Spaces (2018) will find a similar blend of chilling tales, hair-raising adventures, and deeper themes here.

Sometimes the scariest thing is growing up.Halloween-loving Esther, who is implied Ashkenazi Jewish and White, has had her bat mitzvah, which makes her an adult in religious terms, but she's not ready to let go of trick-or-treating, even when her parents say otherwise. She's also not ready to move on to high school or to do anything about her feelings for her best friend, Agustín, whose name may cue him as Latinx. But when the Queen of Halloween freezes their neighborhood in permanent Halloween, Esther finds herself reconsidering the value of forward momentum. Fink, of Welcome to Night Vale podcast fame, tries to do a lot with his creepy premise, but heavy-handed, meaning-laden passages-for example, digressions about neighbors as Esther and friends flee through yards chased by a villain flinging razor-bristling apples-slow the pace to a crawl and leave little for the reader to discover. Esther is joined in her fight against the Halloween Queen (who has sent the adults into a magical Dream and stolen the children) by Agustín; Korean American Christian bully Sasha; and seemingly boring, default White dentist Mr. Gabler, all of whom serve as foils for Esther's emotional growth as she learns to see past the surface. This reads like two books uneasily combined: one about growing up and discovering people's value and the other a horror story with a fantastic sense of place and some wonderfully shivery (and not entirely resolved) details.Disappointingly fails to coalesce. (Horror. 11-14)

Gr 5 Up-Thirteen-year-old Esther Gold, who is Jewish, is into Halloween like other kids are into Christmas. When her parents tell her she's too old for trick-or-treating, she sneaks out with her best friend Augustin. But this is no ordinary night of trick-or-treatingthe pair discover the whole town has been put under a sleeping spell except for her boring adult white male dentist neighbor and a Korean girl from her school who bullies her. The quartet is pursued by horror-style food truck drivers throwing razor bladestudded apples and robot trick-or-treaters breaking into the house, eventually discovering the Queen of Halloween has frozen the town in a permanent state of the holiday. It's up to the four of them to figure out how to fix it. Unfortunately, this title seems to be confused about its own theme. It opens with a girl who loves Halloween because Halloween is a story and she loves stories. This is conveyed by cerebral passages that seem overly sophisticated and not quite comprehensible. Then it's about a girl who's not ready to grow up: she wants to keep trick-or-treating and isn't ready for a budding romance with her best friend. The themes never really come together, and what might have been a rollicking thriller plods along at a painfully tedious pace. Additionally, the character's identities feel tacked on and are referred to mostly as needed for plot points. VERDICT A title whose themes don't quite come together in the end, yielding more trick than treat. Not recommended.Hillary Perelyubskiy, Los Angeles P.L.