This is a strange little volume of macabre stories, mostly told in verse, of children with unusual issues and the horrors that befall them. I suppose it's supposed to be darkly humorous, but I found it just plain old weird. Though in the same vein as Edward Gorey, it's not quite as clever. However, it's not bad for a ten-minute read.

Registered in Centreville, Virginia, USA.

Put in the Bizarre Fiction Bookbox.

I'm sitting here trying to make my choices out of the Bizarre Bookbox, and I ended up zipping through this little book of verse. It's rather charming in its own freaky little way. I really enjoyed James ("Unwisely, Santa offered a teddy bear to James, unaware that he had been mauled by a grizzly earlier that year") and the title tale (very melancholy, indeed).

Although this isn't exactly in the spirit (no pun intended) of the bookbox, I'm leaving this in the bookbox to travel on to the next stop. Thanks for including it, melydia. Tim Burton is hit-or-miss for me, so I doubt I would have picked this up on my own.

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Hardcover, 113 pages

Retrieved from the Bizarre Bookbox. Just want to see if his writing is as surreal as his movies can be. (At least that's the excuse I'm using!!)