In the Land of the Lawn Weenies
and Other Warped and Creepy Tales

This file contains a synopsis of each story, followed, in many cases, by discussion questions, activities, or other information designed for classroom use. The stories are listed in the order they appear in the book. Suggestions are welcome.

"Fairy in a Jar"

While trying to catch fireflies, a boy catches a fairy. This is no Tonkerbell. She has sharp teeth and a bad atitude. Once he has her in captivity, he is afraid to release her. She offers him a bargain that he foolishly accepts.

Discussion / Activities / Other useful information:

This story can be used for predictive reading. Some students might be able to guess why the fairy offers to make a diamond.

The story presents a good example of a dilemma. It can also be tied to issues of power, and even to ethical issues related to pet ownership.

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After breaking a trinket at a flea market and hiding her actions, a girl is cursed so whatever she loves the most will disappear after she touches it. By the end of the story, she has lost everything, including herself.

Discussion / Activities / Other useful information:

The story is a nice way to introduce a discussion on responsibility. Ask the students, "What is the worst thing that would have happened to Laura if she had confessed what she'd done?"

The ending might not be obvious to younger readers. Ask them why the ringing stopped.

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A boy loses his father's hand. It comes back to punish him.

Discussion / Activities / Other useful information:

This is probably one of the best stories to read aloud, if you are looking for a laugh. I treat the lines in the paragraph approaching the "WHACK!" like Haydn's "Surprise Symphony," getting softer and softer, and then shouting.

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A boy storms out of his house in anger, and visits a classmate he doesn't know very well. The classmate's grandfather tells the boy a creepy story about monsters, and then invites him for a walk.

Discussion / Activities / Other useful information:

The story can introduce a discussion about how the students feel when they interact with old people -- both their own relatives and their parent's friends.

Ask the students:
"What kind of stories do adults tell you?"
"What kind of stories will you tell to children when you are an adult?"

For the ending to have full impact, the reader has to be misdirected. After the students finish the story, have them go back and look for things that make the grandfather seem like the only character to fear.

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"Light as a Feather, Stiff as a Board"

A spooky game involving patterns and repetition gets out of hand.

Discussion / Activities / Other useful information:

See if the students are familiar with this game.

Note how the lines of the chant are broken up with action or descriptions. Most of the breaks are a single sentence. This helps establish a rhythm to the passages.

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"The Evil Tree"

A boy find a tree with a door in the side. The tree is guarded by a man who tells the boy he is protecting the world from evil. The boy is unable to control his curiosity, and eventually learns what is behind the door.

Discussion / Activities / Other useful information:

After students have read the story, have them go back to look for the place where the guardian is testing Patrick.

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"When I woke up, I was a lizard." A young student has an interesting day after waking up as a fire-breathing giant lizard.

Discussion / Activities / Other useful information:

Question: "Is the main character really a lizard, or just using an active imagination?"

In an effort to make this story universally appealing, I never mentioned whether the narrator was a boy or girl.

The story was inspired, in equal parts, by Franz Kafka's "Metamorphosis" and the Danny Kaye movie based on Thurber's "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty." (A minor character is named "Danny Mitty" in recongition of this, and the teacher is "Mrs. Franzski.")

This is probably one of the most whimsical of the Weenies stories, and is suitable for even the youngest audience.

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"Everyone's a Winner"

A boy is envious when he sees another boy win an armful of prizes at a carnival. His envy changes to terror when he finds out the prizes are a trap.

Discussion / Activities / Other useful information:

Carnival prizes are a nice way to discuss smart consumerism. The idea of trading up for a larger prize gets less appealing when students understand the math behind the offer. (If three small prizes earn one medium prize, three medium earn one large, and three large earn on jumbo, how many small prizes do you need to get a jumbo prize?)

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"A Little off the Top"

A boy with an overactive immagination finds a stranger in place of his regular barber. The stranger has a razor. Despite this, the story is a comedy.

Discussion / Activities / Other useful information:

This is a good way to help students learn that they aren't alone in having worries and fears. Compare the fear here to that in "Hide."

Yes, the name "Sweeny" is a reference to Sweeny Todd.

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A mean baby sitter drags her charge to a playground and ignores him. She also ignores the tube slide in front of her, until she realzies that she's seen a lot of kids come out of the bottom, but hasn't seen anyone go into the top. Her realization comes a bit too late.

Discussion / Activities / Other useful information:

Note the various ways, through both her thoughts and actions, that Kay is portrayed as unworthy of sympathy.

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A boy who is afraid of "the big kids" gets chased by bullies, but is rescued by some really big kids, who happen to dislike bullies.

Discussion / Activities / Other useful information:

The story is a good introduction to bullying, but it is also a nice way to start a discussion about relative perceptions. To a first grader, a third grader is a big kid. Ask your older students how they feel about this.

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"Your Worst Nightmare"

A bully tells his victin, "I'm your worst nightmare." The bully then learns the real meaning of this phrase.

Discussion / Activities / Other useful information:

A nice way to illustrate literal and figurative language.

Note that most of the story is a flashback.

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A boy discovers a cell phone that allows him to listen to conversations from the future.

Discussion / Activities / Other useful information:

When this story was written, call phones were fairly new. Have the students pick some new technology to use as the basis for a story.

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A girl is teased and taunted by her brother. When he gets attacked by a sand shark -- on dry land -- she thinks he is still teasing her.

Discussion / Activities / Other useful information:

This story, more than any other, causes students to ask, "What happened next." Many feel it doesn't have an ending. They want to know what the parents did next, or what really happened to the brother. You can ask them to write their own ending, or discuss that there are many ways to end a story.

You can pair this with Aesop's "The Boy Who Cried Wolf."

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A boy in the back seat of his family car wonders if the trip will never end. Eventually, the reader is led to conclude that the trip lasts forever.

Discussion / Activities / Other useful information:

This story is based not on an event, but on a feeling. Every kid has felt, at some point, that a trip would never end. Ask the students to dredge up a childhood feeling of this sort. It could be a memory, a feeling, or even a fear, and turn it into a story. For another example, see "A Little off the Top," which was based on memories of getting a hair cut, and how unpleasant it was to have my head in the hands of the barber.

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"The Language of Beasts"

A girl who doesn't like people wishes she could understand animals when they talk. When she gets her wish, she discovers what the animals really think about her.

Discussion / Activities / Other useful information:

This is a classic example of the "be careful what you wish for" story.

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Spoiler alert. A clueless substitute takes a class of young werewolves to a planeterium. When the full moon comes out, it's all over for him.

Discussion / Activities / Other useful information:

This story is loaded with clues. Have the students do a second reading, looking for all the ways the true nature of the characters was hinted at.

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When two boys stumble across a vampire, their courage is tested.

Discussion / Activities / Other useful information:

This is a good story to launch a discussion about friendship and peer pressure. It is also one of the scarier stories in the collection.

Note that the kids meet on the corner of Stoker and Main.

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"The Substitute"

A girl is taunted and teased by all her classmates. When a substitue science teacher asks her to participate in an experiment in conductivity she flees the classroom and finds herself face to face with a moral decision.

Discussion / Activities / Other useful information:

This story raises a great discussion question for older students. Many of them will enjoy the ending, but most would agree that Jane made a very bad decision. Is it okay to enjoy a story where a character acts in a way that we know is wrong? How does fiction differ from reality? Is there any way to justify Jane's decision?

There is an unauthorized, but excellent, student film based on this story. You can find it on YouTube.

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"The Vampire's Rat"

A boy takes a rat for a pet after he sees a vampire drink its blood. This turns out to be a bad idea.

Discussion / Activities / Other useful information:

This is a good demonstration of ecology in the original meaning of the word, where it dealt with life-cycles and the interdependence of various life forms.

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When a group of kids chase their baseball into the yard of a spooky old woman's house, they discover she is really a magical and wonderful person. She transforms them, one by one, into whatever animal best represents their true nature. This is a wonderful experience for all but one of them.

Discussion / Activities / Other useful information:

If you could become any animal, what would you choose?

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A boy on a family vacation sneaks into a reptile zoo, hoping to see the python get fed. Things end badly, though not the way the reader might expect.

Discussion / Activities / Other useful information:

Jason presents a good example of a bad attitude. Ask the students how they would have felt in his situation. What could he have done to mkae the trip more enjoyable?

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"Burger and Fries"

When low-priced competition threatens the family business, a boy decides to find out how anyone can sell hamburgers so cheaply. The answer stinks.

Discussion / Activities / Other useful information:

Many students don't realize the full cost of running a business. This story is a good way to introduce them to some basic concepts in economics.

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A girl borrows her brother's video game without his permission. When she plugs it into an old outlet in the attic, she finds herself playing a game that is much more absorbing than she'd like.

Discussion / Activities / Other useful information:

There doesn't seem to be any way Linda could have saved herself once she realized her fate was tied to the fate of her ship, but perhaps your students can come up with some suggestions.

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When a jar of Sea Monkeys gets fed plant fertilizer, they grow dangerously large.

Discussion / Activities / Other useful information:

Sea monkeys are really just brine shrimp. Ask the students if they've ever been disappointed by something they sent away for. Has a description made them think they were getting something better than what they got. (A good example for them is an ad for a toy that appears to be wireless, but actually shows just a little bit of the power cord in the ad.)

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After a girl's father brings home a parrot, the bird starts to threaten the girl.

Discussion / Activities / Other useful information:

This is a classic horror story.

Ask the students what they would have done when the bird started making threats.

Ask the students the significance of that scars on the hands of the pet-shop owner.

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"Join the Party "

A lonely boy is invited into a house where young people are having a party. It eventually dawns on him that all the other kids are ghosts. He starts to wonder whether he's become a ghost, himself.

Discussion / Activities / Other useful information:

This is a good way to launch a discussion of loneliness, socializing, and the benefits (and difficulty) of trying to change the parts of your life that make you unhappy.

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"The Billion Legger"

A boy tries to kill a centipede. It not only manages to thwart his attempts -- it also grows longer each evening.

Discussion / Activities / Other useful information:

This story gives a literal demonstration of a basic aspect of plots. The main character's problem keeps growing. His efforts just make things worse.

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"The Battle-Ax"

Boys playing in the woods discover an ancient battle ax. When one of them touches it, the spirit of its berserker owner takes control of him.

Discussion / Activities / Other useful information:

What would you do if you found a weapon in the woods?

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"In the Land of the Lawn Weenies"

A boy moves to a town where all the residents are obsessed with having the perfect lawn. He fears that his parents will be swept up by the frenzy.

Discussion / Activities / Other useful information:

The perfect lawn has become a hot topic for environmental discussions. Ask the students to think up a totally different way to landscape a lawn.

This was the story that inspired the first Weenie cover.

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Two girls try to get to know the new girl. When they repsond to her indifference with a mean prank, they find out what she's really like.

Discussion / Activities / Other useful information:

This story is a bit different from most of the others. In this case, the character who comes to a bad end is the one who felt remorse, as opposed to the one who caused the trouble. If the students have read a variety of the stories, see if they notice this difference.

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A boy, stuck in a mind-numbingly boring family vacation, runs away, and runs into trouble when he encounters a giant spider.

Discussion / Activities / Other useful information:

Something thin and fragile, like a single strand of spider silk, can become powerful when combined. This concept can lead into a discussion of cooperative behavior.

While there are probably not any spiders that big, there are plenty of other reasons not to run off into the woods alone. See what dangers the students can envision.

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"The Witch's Monkey"

A girl enthralled with monkeys learns that a strange old lady in her town has one for a pet. When she tries to sneak a peek at it, she end up much closer than she'd like.

Discussion / Activities / Other useful information:

Ask the students what they would do if they saw an animal that was kept in cruel conditions.

Discuss the good and bad aspects of having passionate interests.

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When some boys tease a girl, she places a curse on them. From that moment on, everything they say becomes literally true.

Discussion / Activities / Other useful information:

This story is a great way to introduce literal and figurative language. You can take just about any piece of writing, from a newspaper story to a magazine article, or an advertisment, and ask the students to imagine what would happen if every word and prhase was literally true. Students can take a common phrase, such as "It's raining cats and dogs" and draw a literal version. For older students search of the Philip K. Dick story, "The Eyes Have It," which gives a brilliant take on literal language.

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A boy's younger brother is afraid of cows. His fears turn out not to be groundless.

Discussion / Activities / Other useful information:

How can we deal with fear? Are there different types of fear?

Note how the single word, "inside," takes on a great deal of power as the narrator starts to understand what his brother is talking about.

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