This horror phantasmagoria follows 11-year-old Griffin as a trip down the school's eerie slide results in him and his friends being transported from the playground to the "painground," a nightmarish world where monsters are out to get them. Ocker's foray into middle-grade horror brings fresh material to the category, including tropes and themes typically relegated to YA or adult books. Readers should be aware of the content warnings (animal harm, child abuse) before proceeding, as well as the fact that a thinly veiled metaphor for abuse pops up throughout the book. Otherwise, this is a knuckle-tightening trip into a haunting environment from which Griffin and his friends must escape before it's too late. Readers will appreciate the moments of friendship in the face of death and danger, which bring some much-needed levity and warmth to a dark, dreary story line. While this book may not be a fit for every horror fan, it weaves an interesting premise and promises poignant moments between the characters as they try to escape the hellscape they've found themselves in.

After a mysterious black tube slide appears at their school playground, kids start going missing.If Griffin goes down the Black Slide, becoming the first kid to try it out, then bully Ozzie says he will lay off him for the rest of the year. The subsequent surreal, painful, too-long tumble through darkness drops Griffin in an alien world before he snaps back to reality with a broken arm and nightmares for his troubles. In the following days, fifth graders go missing at an alarming rate, their absences unnoticed by adults; two of them Griffin observes go down the Black Slide but never come out. Trying to prevent his hypnotized best friend, Laila, from going down it too, Griffin ends up taking his second trip with her, and they land in the Painful Place, a hard world of rock and metal where children are subjected to painful experiments by the sadomasochistic inhabitants. Accurately described in the acknowledgements as "Hellraiser for kids," the descriptions focus on the way pain feels rather than physical injuries, and emotional pain is given equal weight. Griffin and Laila must find a way to escape and save their classmates in a plot packed with endless dangers and unexpected alliances. The "happy" ending shows the consequences of their ordeals before landing on a final stinger. Physical descriptors of the kids are absent.An intense, disturbing read as likely to give nightmares as to become a new favorite. (Horror. 10-14)

The sudden appearance of a mysterious black tube slide brings unease to the Osshua Elementary School playground, capitalizing on the fear of impending adolescence, in this genuinely bloodcurdling thriller by Ocker (The Smashed Man of Dread). When bully Ozzie Aldridge dares fifth grader Griffin Birch to be the first down the eerie Black Slide in exchange for a year’s reprieve from Ozzie’s torment, Griffin readily agrees, but upon entering the tube, feels like “something grabbed him by the ankles and yanked.” After falling for an indefinite duration (“The Black Slide was not this long. Not this long by a lot. And yet he kept sliding”), he experiences a “lifetime inside that darkness,” and finally emerges with an inexplicably broken arm. But that’s the least of Griffin’s concerns as his classmates begin disappearing at an increasingly alarming rate, including his best friend. While a seemingly singular focus on the sinister elements over character makes it occasionally difficult to connect with the cast, Ocker’s contemplative, metaphor-laden narration (“Griffin felt the inevitable next moment like a choking haze in the room”) lends pensiveness and gravitas to this dread-inducing novel. Ages 8–12. Agent: Alex Slater, Sanford J. Greenburger Assoc. (Aug.)