Graphic Novel Review: Welcome to Feral: Little Town. Big Scares! by Mark Fearing

Welcome to Feral: Little Town. Big Scares! by Mark Fearing. Holiday House, 2022. 9780823448654.

Freya uses an abandoned storm cellar to get to the bottom of all of the weird stories in Feral. At the beginning of the book she’s adding a new incident to her map, the story of two kids who go into the city playground to ride the Spaghetti Death Twist slide even though it’s unsafe. As Freya tells us after the story, ” If you stand next to the slide at sunset and listen carefully…you can still hear them screaming.” The four other stories in the book involve an ice cream truck deep in the woods, a girl sent to detention for not completing her book report, a rocket-obsessed boy who restores an old bike, and a group of scouts whose adult leader is probably a vampire. Ghosts, tentacled monsters, and werewolves all make an appearance or two.

I would have loved reading this graphic novel to my daughter when she was still young enough to be a little freaked out by it. There’s nothing too graphic, even in the one story where kids are clearly being consumed, and it will have a lot of shelf appeal for young horror readers. The simple layouts are used expertly, and the balance of text to images works to make the weirdness stand out.

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