Scream Street Blog Tour

Scream Street author and all round top bloke Tommy Donbavand has written an exclusive Scream Street short story that is being serialised across a number of blogs as part of his celebrating the release of the thirteenth and final Scream Street book, Flame of the Dragon. If this is news to you then head on over to the Scream Street website to read the first chapter, and then follow the link given to find chapter two. 

Chapter Eleven 

The Pet 

Henry reappeared through the fence piece by piece, looking like a child’s rubber toy that had been overstretched to the point of breaking.

“How was that?” he asked.

Luke, Resus and Cleo stared at the phantom in horror. His face sagged dramatically to one side, his stomach bulged over the waistband of his trousers and his arms were now so long that they dragged on the ground as he walked.

“Yikes!” exclaimed Resus. “It might be an idea to stick to open doors for the time being.”

A pale shadow fell over the group as they grabbed bits of Henry and tried to reshape him. “When you’ve all finished mucking around,” snarled Mr Aspin, “it’s time for Henry’s first test!”

“Yes, sir,” croaked Henry, finally looking more or less like himself again. “Whatever you say, sir.”

The phantom president consulted his clipboard. “The first challenge is for Harper to Petrify a Pet...”

“Well, that shouldn’t be too hard,” said Cleo. “Cats and dogs have a sixth sense about ghosts. They frequently see things that people can’t.”

“The problem is,” said Luke, “that I haven’t seen Shan the witch’s cat around for ages, and the only dogs in Scream Street are Sir Otto’s hellhounds.”

“I don’t want to go anywhere near them.” Henry quivered. “They scare me!”

“Wait,” said Resus. “The rule is that Henry has to scare a pet, right?”

“That’s right,” said Aspin.

“Then it doesn’t have to be cat or a dog.” The vampire beamed. “Follow me...”

They found Fifi Crudley in her garden, playing with her pet mouse. The young bog monster was encouraging the mouse to run from left to right by offering it lumps of cheese.

“There you go,” said Resus.

“A mouse?” scoffed Aspin, flicking through his notes.

“It’s still a pet,” Resus pointed out. “And Henry shouldn’t have to blow too hard in order to give it a scare.”

Mr Aspin, unable to find anything in the rules that forbade a phantom from scaring a mouse, produced a pen and got ready to make notes. “Get on with it,” he growled.

“OK, Henry,” said Cleo. “This is it... Just do your best.”

The phantom nodded nervously and crouched down in front of the mouse. Fifi, unable to see him, continued to make the animal dash back and forth. Frowning in concentration, Henry blew gently.

The mouse stopped, mid-scamper, and turned to face Henry, whiskers twitching.

“It’s working!” hissed Resus. “Blow harder, Henry!”

Henry sucked in a deep lungful of air and blew as hard as he could. The mouse stared at him, blinking in the breeze, then was suddenly lifted off its feet. It flew straight at Fifi, sinking into her gooey stomach with a sickening schlop!

“Squeaker!” screamed Fifi, plunging a fist into the muddy folds of her belly and fishing around for her tiny friend.

The trio were dragging Henry towards the garden gate by the time she pulled the mouse free.

~~~

The story will continue tomorrow over at Trapped By Monsters.

Review: The Scream Street series by Tommy Donbavand

After Luke Watson transforms into a werewolf for the third time, he and his parents are moved by the Government Housing of Unusual Lifeforms (G.H.O.U.L.) to Scream Street – a community of vampires, zombies, witches and more. In Scream Street, Luke and his parents discover a nightmarish world of the undead. Luke soon makes friends with vampire Resus Negative and mummy Cleo Farr, but he remains determined to take his terrified parents home. After liberating the powerful book Tales of Scream Street from his new landlord, Otto Sneer, Luke learns that the founding fathers of the community each left behind a powerful relic. Collecting together all six is his only hope of opening a doorway out of the street, so with the help of Resus and Cleo he sets out to find the first one, the vampire’s fang. But with Otto Sneer determined to thwart him at every turn, will Luke even get past the first hurdle alive?

Do you have children under the age of 10? If so, have they read any of Tommy Donbavand's Scream Street books yet? If the answer is yes to both of these questions then you will already know how good they are. If your answer is yes to the first question, but no to the second, then you really must try to get your hands on these. Kids love horror stories, the past success of the Goosebumps books are testament to this, and the Scream Street books are a perfect introduction to this horror genre for younger readers. They feature classic characters of the genre including vampires, werewolves, mummies and zombies, and with a heavy dose of Tommy's sparkling humour they do so in a way that is far from scary. I know a six year old boy who reads these with his parents at bed time and there are smiles all round.

Tommy Donbavand has an incredible and hilarious imagination; in these books he has delved into the most famous of the classic horror stories and used elements from them to create a new and original series that is perfect for the under 10s. There have been similar books in the past, Anthony Horowitz's Groosham Grange being an obvious example, but in my opinion Scream Street beats Mr H's ghoulish school hands down, and the principle reason for this is the fascinating array of characters that Mr Donbavand has created. Aside from main character Luke, we have the wonderfully names Resus Negative, the normal son of vampiric parents - as a wannabe vampire the lengths he goes to in order to fit in with popular image of a vampire are laugh out loud funny. Making up the trio of friends is Cleo, the ancient Egyptian mummy -  a lot of rather nasty things eem to happen to Cleo, but it is ok as she is already dead and her vital organs are stored in jars. Of course, all of these characters have parents, each of whom bring many comic elements to the stories. However, my personal favourite is Doug the zombie. All I will say about Doug is that his character is based heavily on a stereotypical surf dude - now your imaginations can do the rest.

Tommy Donbavand is assisted in his work by the delightful illustrations of Lily Bernard. Younger kids love illustrations in their books - it helps them to visualise the characters and make the story even more fun to read. Ms Bernard's images capture the comic elements of Tommy's writing perfectly, and I mean no disrepect to Mr Donbavand when I say that the books would be very different without them. Think of Roald Dahl and Quentin Blake - Mr Dahl's books are obviously fantastic without illustrations, but Mr Blake's images are the icing on an already perfect cake. This is how I feel about the Donbavand/Bernard partnership.

There are currently seven books published by Walker Books in the Scream Street series, with the eighth, Attack of the Trolls, scheduled to be released on 4th May 2010, and a total of thirteen books planned overall. So far I have only read the first four books in the series but my godsons have told me the next three are just as good, if not better. You can get a good feel for Tommy's sense of humour by watching some of his homemade book trailer videos that I have included for you at the end of this post. Tommy has also written a book called Zombie! for Barrington Stoke, which I believe will be released as an audio book sometime in the future (read by none other than the author himself).