Every childhood has its monsters -- the ones we make up, whose myth grows more elaborate and frightening with every retelling, and the ones that are real. THE PRICKER BOY tells the story of a group of friends whose monster, always "just a story" before this summer, seems to have crossed the border from fantasy to reality. All the trappings of a typical ghost story are here (strange sights and sounds, nightmares, inexplicable and creepy occurrences), yet the unfolding shies from predictability. Complex characterization and a particularly vivid setting, compounded with a creepy mystery and ongoing sense of anxiety, combine to make THE PRICKER BOY a chilling pageturner. My friends made endless fun of me as soon as I said the name of this book, but this scared the pants off of me. Stucks is a year-round resident of a small lakeside community. Every summer he and his friends leave offerings for the Pricker Boy - a boy who got lost in the pricker bushes around the lake and now seeks to drag away the unwary. Perhaps the spookiest part (although there were many for yours truly) was when the children made their offerings. One person was the lookout while the other ventured alone through a maze of pricker bushes to leave something on a special rock. Terrifying.
