Review Detail

You know a book is good, especially a middle grade book, when you dream about it, no, when you have a nightmare about it! People weren't kidding when they say that R.L. Stine is the Stephen King for kids!

The Haunted Mask is split up into three parts, which gives us three point-of-views...
The story starts out with shop owner named William who enjoys creating beautiful, exotic and happy masks. He believes that his masks are to bring fun and joy to the persons wearing them. But when his estranged brother, Randolph, shows up with a proposition to go into business together, showing him a case full of the most ugly and twisted masks he has ever seen. They quarrel and things get quite intense and scary.
Now 40 years later, we meet Lu-Ann and Devin and they are talking about their plans for Halloween. Lu-Ann is tired of going to her friends boring Halloween party every year and now that they are older, she is hoping to make things scary and interesting. Meanwhile, Devin and his family are going to go live on a pumpkin farm for the whole week of Halloween and won't be around to go to the party.
On Halloween, Lu-Ann and her two friends, Brad and Marcus, go to Polly's boring Halloween party and weird things start happening. They run upstairs into the attic and find a chest full of masks. They decide to put on the masks to frighten the party-goers... little does Lu-Ann that her mask is "special".
The story then jumps back a few days before Halloween showing us what Devin has been going through living on the pumpkin farm which has not been fun... and the most scariest things have been happening too.
On Halloween everyone's story collides together to create the most suspenseful and scariest of all endings ever. R.L. Stine really does know how to deliver a good scare!

I highly recommend that parents read this first before giving to any children under the age of 8. My son is 8 1/2 and I'm not sure if I want him reading it yet even though he thinks the cover is one of the coolest bookcovers he has ever seen, lol! I guess we'll be finding out this fall whether he'll still think that or not!