The Battle of the Red Hot Pepper Weenies
Gr 6–9—In this entertaining collection of three dozen short stories, Lubar creates characters who will quickly engage readers. The selections range between two and six pages in length. Some are humorous, such as the title story, which involves middle schoolers in a hot-pepper-eating contest, while others are moralistic horror tales, such as "The Ratty Old Bumbershoot," in which a boy is eaten by an umbrella that he "borrows" but has no intention of returning. Still others are science fiction, as...
