The Pricker Boy

In this darkly atmospheric story, 14-year-old Stucks lives with his family in a rural region that sees visitors only in summer. In the winter, it's always just been Stucks and his best friend, Pete. As they do every year, Stucks and his summer companions gather around a fire pit to tell spooky stories, the most notorious of which surrounds the thorn-covered Pricker Boyâthe son of a fur trapper who was ensnared in one of his father's traps. Though Stucks believes he has encountered the Pricker Boy, the others largely reject the story as a myth, until sacrificial gifts that they have left for the creature throughout the years are ominously returned. As they navigate the forest, hoping to loosen the Pricker Boy's increasing psychological hold on them, Stucks occasionally encounters Pete, whose episodes of violence, revisited in flashbacks to previous summers, still haunt his victims. While Whinnem's (Utten and Plumley) supernatural labyrinth withholds as much as it reveals, the book's final disclosures surprise and resonate, leading readers to question: which is the more frightening monster: the one that lurks in the woods or in the mind? Ages 12âup.

December 1, 2009
Gr 7-9-Stucks, 14, and his friend Pete are year-round residents of their lakeside community, joined each summer by kids whose families own vacation cottagesEmily, Ronnie, Vivek, and Stucks's cousin Robin. For years, the friends have been telling each other scary campfire stories starring the Pricker Boy, once a real child who was tricked into getting caught in one of his father's animal traps, taken in by the dense woods, and transformed into a revenge-seeking creature with "skin hardened like bark]and thorns over every inch of his body." Their belief that the stories aren't real is shaken when a package filled with childhood objectssacrificed in years past to keep the monster awaymysteriously appears. Going into the woods beyond the hawthorn trees won't really bring danger and death, will it? And Pete, with his unpredictable behavior, isn't really going over to the dark side, is he? This summer is all about the friends testing their limits, finding a way to deal with their fears, and overcoming emotional trauma. While loose ends abound and certain plot elements defy logical explanation, the spooky mood is sustained and will carry many readers to consider their own nightmares, imagine their greatest fears, and have empathy for these characters dealing with their own bogeymen."Joel Shoemaker, South East Junior High School, Iowa City, IA"

Copyright 2009 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

August 1, 2009
Grades 6-9 All the local kids know the story of the Pricker Boy, the demonic presence that supposedly lives in the woods past the thorn bushes and the Widows Stone. But, cmon; its just a story, isnt it? Fourteen-year-old Stucks begins to wonder that summer when the spooky stuff of campfire ghost stories seems to be turning into a terrifying reality that threatens to sunder his circle of friends. First novelist Whinnem has written an ambitious story of psychological suspense that sometimes gets bogged down by flashbacks and one-dimensional characterization. There are still plenty of chills, however, and enough tantalizing imponderables (Why has Stucks younger brother stopped speaking? What has happened to his best friend Pete? Whats the meaning of the nightmares plaguing Stuck and his friends?) to hold young horror readers attentions until the appropriately operatic denouement.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2009, American Library Association.)

January 1, 2010
Pete's absence from a longstanding group of friends sets everyone on edge. When a campfire tale begins to mesh disconcertingly with reality, the psychological tension mounts. Deftly handled flashbacks help flesh out the relationships in the story, both a dark mystery and a haunting tale of loss. The book's conclusion, tantalizingly, leaves some questions unanswered.

(Copyright 2010 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)