Eerie series: Game Over and Hunter and Collector (S Carey, Puffin)

Game Over and Hunter and Collector are the first two titles in a new thriller series for children aged seven and up. In Game Over, a new boy at school dazzles John with his video game collection. He has just moved to Australia from the US and has all the latest Atari games (it is 1982). His mother Hazel is fun and pretty and always gives the boys sugary treats to eat. Then John discovers that she is stealing the souls of children and only just manages to save himself. Unfortunately, he doesn’t manage to save his two friends or his brother. In Hunter and Collector, an extra-terrestrial woman is on the hunt for children she can kidnap and sell into alien zoos and private collections. Her target, a young boy called Will, seems like he will be easy to take; then he reveals his own private collection of preserved bodies which make up a play family. These stories aren’t written in a particularly terrifying way and there is not really any horror aspect to them, however, neither book has a happy ending. I think that the level of reading may mean that they’re quite scary to children in the seven-plus age group who will be reading them.

Amelia Vahtrick is the children’s book buyer at Better Read Than Dead in Newtown

Books+Publishing pre-publication reviews are supported by the Copyright Agency Cultural Fund.

Category: Reviews