Strange Happenings: Five Tales of Transformation

By Avi

Book Overview

Children become cats and birds, a once-invisible young woman pieces herself back together, and the identity of a mysterious baseball mascot is uncovered--all within this eclectic collection from master storyteller Avi. By turns chilling, ethereal, and surreal, these thought-provoking tales are sure to engage anyone who has ever wondered what it would be like to become someone--or something --else.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0152057900
• ISBN13: 9780152057909
• Release Date: May 2006
• Publisher: Clarion Books
• Length: 160 Pages
• Weight: 0.76 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.5" x 8.3"
• Age Range: 8 to 12 years
• Grade Range: Grades 3 to 7

Customer Reviews

Entertaining

I purchased this book for my son and he loved it. He read it over a weekend and he said each page caught his curiosity for more. The stories are short enough not to get bored with and the mystery hold you until the end. Great book, teens will enjoy it.

Wonderfully eerie

Surprisingly, this book is a little more intense than it looks, and I suppose it serves me right for expecting less from Avi. However, when I ordered this I was honestly predicting some cute little spooky stories and nothing more. Instead, Avi whips out the crazies from his deep imagination for some truly spellbinding and even disturbing tales (that are still appropriate for children's literature, of course). Impressive, all the way. Avi hits everything from the modern day to the fairy tale to the historical, and each story is wonderfully different from the rest. The book is a quick read, the stories indeed short stories, but it truly is a fantastic, haunting collection. Highly recommended.

Strange Happenings

I bought this for my 11 yr old son to read over summer break. After reading it myself, I'm glad I did. The short stories are just what summer is about. Relaxing diversion from school, quick easy read. Avi always writes such interesting characters. I'm sure he will enjoy it.

My favorite book from 3rd grade

Hi, my name is Kaitlin, and I'm nine years old, and I read Strange Happenings. It has five stories and they are really cool! The stories are about: a boy named Simon, an ugly lady, a baseball playing boy that met an alien, two boys that wanted to be a cat, and there is one more, but I can't remember it. I'm telling you, it's really cool! I liked how the author made five stories because it's very interesting. I liked the one about the ugly lady. It was awesome! If you've never read it, read it, because it's a very funny book!

Nice kitty

Cats haven't been considered really and truly evil for centuries now, but try telling that to Avi in his latest collection of short stories. Cats? They're friends with the devil himself. They'll transform bodies with you and then leave you stuck as a feline for the rest of your days. In "Strange Happenings: Five Tales of Transformation", Avi gives up the world of historical fiction and kid adventures to bring us some fantasy and sci-fi tales that come across as low-key Ray Bradbury. Not quite as chilling, of course. Let's just consider them starter-Bradbury fare. They're not always moral tales and not always agreeable, but they've the advantage of always being interesting and always containing just a hint of darkness to their souls. Whether he's channeling fables or Rod Serling, Avi's book is for those kids who want tales of magic rather than scary fare. These stories are warnings. Not frightenings. The first tale, "Bored Tom" (which sounds like a character from Struwwelpeter) is the first of these transformative tales. Tom's bored as all get out. He's like Maurice Sendak's Pierre, feeling that life has nothing new to offer him. That is, until one day a cat comes to him with a particularly interesting proposition. Story number two is "Babette the Beautiful". In it, a queen wishes for a daughter of complete and utter perfection. She gets her wish, but it's the daughter that has to pay the price. Story number three was "Curious" about a boy's search to discover who's really inside the local baseball mascot's costume. Curiosity kills the cat in this one. Rounding out the book are Avi's attempts at creating new fables. "The Shoemaker and Old Scratch", involves a man, a cat, and the devil himself as one character attempts to outwit the other. Finally there's "Simon", about a man who wanted everyone in the world to take notice of him and the consequences of when they do. The connecting thread between these tales is that in each one someone, or some thing, changes from one physical appearance to another. Transformation, both internally and externally, as it were. Because of its particularly pretty cover art, the book is bound to attract a whole host of enthusiastic child readers. The question is, how strong a book is this? It's always difficult to review collections of short stories, especially for children, since you're judging the author on scant little glimpses of interesting tales. What it comes down to is whether or not the author adapts just as well to the short format as he or she does to the longer. In Avi's case, it's kind of touch and go. He's certainly won the reader over in terms of interest. Every tale is an interesting one, even those of a moralistic bent. So how well do they stick with you in the long run? Will the kid that reads these stories be thinking of them long afterwards or will they immediately forget them? The answer is both. I think the fables, like "Simon" and the "Old Scratch" tale, are for