BE WARY! Mary McScary by R. L. Stine and Marc Brown

MARY McSCARY LIKES TO BE SCARY.

With her spiky red hair and glaring eyes, Mary's BOOOOO! seems to be fearfully frightful. She scares the cat into spike-tailed flight.

At breakfast, when she plasters two fried eggs over her eyes with a yellow-eyed glare, her dad almost spills his hot coffee all over himself. And her mom is more than alarmed when Mary appears from the kitchen juggling a tray loaded with a full pitcher and assorted large fruits precariously on her head. At dinner, with meatballs for eyes and spaghetti for bloody worms dangling from her mouth, she clears the room. Even the goldfish is frightened of Mary.

BEWARE OF MARY McSCARY!

But Mary can't seem to scare her Cousin Harry.

Harry McScary seems to be Mary-McScary proof, so when she hears he's coming for a visit, Mary McScary pulls out all the stops to make Harry scream. She dons werewolf getup and greets him at the door with RRRROOOAAARRRRR!

"NICE HAIRDO, MARY," SAID HARRY McSCARY.

Mary should be wary of Harry McScarry!

Mary's jar of big black spiders falls flat. Her gorilla act is a flop when Harry hops on for gorilla-back ride. Slimy, slippery snakes and a giant purple hippo don't get a rise out of Harry. Mary McScary's mettle is being sorely tested!

What can a girl do to make the unflappable Harry McScary run screaming out the door?

What does a third-grade boy fear more than any monster?

(Spoiler Alert: It's the hideous cousinly KISS with a few girly Cootchie Coos, and all Mary has to do is pucker up!)

A scary book without a single ghost or vampire or bat, without a single haunted house or spooky tree? Master of the middle reader macabre, R. L. Stine (creator of Goosebumps), joins forces with picture book giant Marc Brown (of Arthur Adventures fame) to bring a new character to the scary season in their latest collaboration, Mary McScary (Orchard Books, 2017). Author Stine cunningly knows how to build suspense, but Marc Brown's clever collage illustrations carry the flag, with Mary's cat acting as a reactive Greek chorus, and assorted spoofs of famous paintings (such as Munch's "The Scream") also backing up what's going on in the foreground. It's not a new plot point, but Stine and Brown make the most of it in this different book for the spooky season, a first purchase for primary graders for October reading.