Mary Downing Hahn has done it again with The Puppet's Playback! This collection of stories is spine-tingling and a great recommendation for reluctant readers. I highly recommend this for all middle-grade collections.

This book was thoroughly disappointing. I can’t believe that this was published. There were some stories in here that were ok, but this was not up to Mary Downing Hahn’s gold standard.

A book of short, creepy stories, sure to appeal to die-hard MDH fans. This was not my favorite MDH title, but I think that was simply because there were several of the "shorts" that I would like to see developed into full books.

Short, creepy stories with a somewhat old-fashioned feel that kids will enjoy. I especially liked the two stories with the sports-playing ghosts, a story idea i haven't come across before.

I'm not one for spooky books or movies, but I really enjoyed this one! (I picked it up to evaluate it for a library committee.) It's also the first book I've read by Mary Downing Hahn, and I really enjoy how descriptive her writing is as well as how she incorporates different points of view into her stories--it's not primarily male-focused, as some scary stories tend to be, and the threats range from ghosts to sea monsters to witches. While not every ending is happy, I found that refreshing (though not everyone will, of course).

At first glance I wondered if Ms. Hahn was channeling RL Stine - who wouldn't think of Slappy when seeing this cover? But in truth the titular story is one of the shortest in the book and while it does have a bit of Stine to it, the rest of the stories are very much Hahn.

This book contains ten short stories containing: six ghosts, one vampire, one witch, one sea serpent, and of course one creepy puppet. A couple of the stories were new takes on The Phantom Hitchhiker trope. My favorite of the stories was 'The New Girl'; a thoroughly Gothic tale about a sort of halfway house for dead children transitioning from life to the hereafter.

Stories creepy enough to send a shiver down your spine but not so terrifying they'll give you nightmares, this collection is sure to please any middle grade reader who likes a good scare now and then.

I used to love MDH's books as a kid, so I was eager to pick up this collection of short stories, but sadly, her storytelling was much better in my memory. I always hesitate to give MG books a low rating because clearly I'm not the intended audience, but on the other hand, I have spent my entire life loving MG horror and I feel like I know where the standard should be set — and this isn't it.

The writing is meh, the storylines are boring, and the characters are terribly unbelievable. No child talks like the children in these stories do. The details in the plots are consistently overly convenient (such as how many of the kids have cell phones, only to realize the battery died, etc.) and the scare factor is incredibly low. I don't recommend this collection for most children today. There are just way too many better MG horror options you could spend your money on.

Thank you so much to the publisher for providing me with this review copy in exchange for an honest review!

Mary Downing Hahn is far and away the most popular writer of scary books in my 4th and 5th grade libraries. Teachers enjoy books like Took, Wai Til Helen Comes, and Deep and Dark and Dangerous and often read them to their classes. A collection of short stories, however, is not her usual fare and I was excited to see it listed in dARC form on bot Edelweiss and NetGalley. By giving my kids scary stories without the length of a novel, I know that will make her book accessible to even my more reluctant and struggling readers. Like many anthologies, however, the brevity of the stories results in a lack of depth in characters and less buy-in of the reader. The works collected in this book will appeal to many of my students, but I was more interested in the personal note Ms Hahn added at the end, sharing her development as a writer, including the high school version of a story in the book. Libraries will high circulation of her other books will likely want this one, especially if they also have a large number of students who read collections written by Michael Dahl.

I love the horror for this children's book. It makes for a terrific recommendation for children. We have many that request horror and this is definitely one that could be recommended!!

Hahn is the gold standard when it comes to children’s ghost stories. She never talks down to kids and presents a scary read that usually ends with a repentant ghost finding their way to an other worldly reward. Her books are almost impossible to find in my library because they are so popular. This newest addition, a collection of short scary stories is bound to be just as well loved