The Battle of the Red Hot Pepper 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.

One boy never gets angry. His classmates decide to see how far they can push him.

Discussion / Activities / Other useful information:

Ask the students, "What is the best way to deal with anger?"

I'd originally given the story the title "Anger Management," but I changed it at the last minute. Since the prhase "all the rage" is a bit dated, students might not be familiar with it, but they might enjoy suggesting contemporary synonyms and seeing if any of them have more than one meaning.

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A girl doesn't have a date for the first school dance, so her father decides to make one for her.

Discussion / Activities / Other useful information:

This is a fun, light-hearted pairing with Frankenstein.

Students often ask me if there's if I ever want to change a story after it's been published. In this case, I wish I had made Stitchy react not when he was insulted, but when Lily was insulted. That way, he'd be directly defending her honor.

(A side note for lit-crit fans: I chose the name "Lily" as a wink to James Joyce's "The Dead." The lily, of course, symbolizing life.)

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"The Ratty Old Bumbershoot"

A boy borrows an umbrella, with no intention of retunring it. The umbrella has other ideas.

Discussion / Activities / Other useful information:

This could be a nice way to start a discussion of the changing nature of language, and how words can fall out of fashion.

An umbrella, especially in a wind, is vaguely similar to a bat. What other items bear a resemblance to an animal?

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A boy writes to an author for a class assignment, and the author steals the boy's idea.

Discussion / Activities / Other useful information:

I gave the author the last name "Morgenstern" as a wink to The Princess Bride.

This is definitely one of the best stories to read aloud if you want to make the class laugh. Their dawning awareness that the narrator's three times are the same is a joy to behold.

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"The Wizard's Mandolin"

A wizard uses his mandolin to weave spells. Another wizard, envious of his rival's powers, steals the instrument.

Discussion / Activities / Other useful information:

Note how the use of omniscient voice helps give the story the feel of an ancient tale.

See if the students can think of other musical terms that, like "flat" and "sharp," have multiple meanings.

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"Into the Wild Blue Yonder"

Bad things happen when a loud kid gets on a rickety, old carnival ride.

Discussion / Activities / Other useful information:

See if the students can guess what the name of the ride is turning into. Have them come up with other alliterative names for carnival booths.

Whatver you do -- don't read this story anywhere near lunch time.

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When a girl's attempt to cast a spell goes awry, she is forced to speak without stopping.

Discussion / Activities / Other useful information:

The story is presented as a monologue. Ask the students to think about the advantages and disadvantages of this format. How can the author convey descriptions or conversational responses in a monologue?

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A boy is offered the opportunity to join the League of Wishers, which will allow him to get anything he wants. There is, of course, a small catch.

Discussion / Activities / Other useful information:

"What would you wish for if you could have anything?"

The story is a good way to help students realize that there is often a catch. As the old saying goes, if an offer seems too good to be true, it probably is.

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"The Department Store"

In order to join a group of popular kids, a boy spends the night in a department store. Things go smoothly until the mannequins start to move.

Discussion / Activities / Other useful information:

The story touches on peer pressure and hazing. The main character feels that his intelligence goes unrecognized. Ask the students to think about why he is so eager to join the Wolves.

You can use this story to point out that even published auhtors make mistakes. I wrote, "For an instant, the lights flickered off." This is redundant. I should have caught it during revision.

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"The Battle of the Red Hot Pepper Weenies"

Two boys, one from Texas and the other from Mexico, get into a contest to see who can eat the hottest pepper.

Discussion / Activities / Other useful information:

Ask the students if they've ever gotten into any sort of competition like the one in the story.

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A girl is given a doll that looks just like her. When her mother starts to treat the doll like a person, the girl decides to get rid of it.

Discussion / Activities / Other useful information:

By the end of the story, it's obvious that Deb's mother longs for the past. Have the students see how many clues they can find that point to this (such as the old-style skirt in the first paragraph).

Note how the the early actions of the doll could possbile have rational explanations. The strangesness builds from the explicable to the inexplicable.

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"What's Eating the Vegans?"

A boy fears that his vegan relatives will ruin Thanksgiving. The real problems start when the giant turkeys show up.

Discussion / Activities / Other useful information:

This story is all about tolerance. And flavor.

Note how information, such as the meaning of "vegan," is conveyed through dialogue.

See if the students are aware of the ambiguity of the title.

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"Let's Have a Big Hand for Gerald"

Gerald's hand starts growing larger. Things get out of hand.

Discussion / Activities / Other useful information:

This story pushes absurdity about as far as it can be pushed. But the world of the story, within which this absurdity plays out, is kept totally real and ordinary.

I would have loved to come up with a more powerful ending. Ask the students if they can think of one.

See if younger students can guess the meaning of "symmetrical" from the context clues.

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When a boy realizes one of his fellow campers is shooting birds with a bb gun, he decides he has to do something to stop him.

Discussion / Activities / Other useful information:

This story can launch a discussion of what to do if you see someone with a weapon.

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"The Princess and the Pea Brain"

A less-than-bright prince does poorly when given the simple task of placing a pea beneath ten matresses.

Discussion / Activities / Other useful information:

Fractured fairy tales are a great writing exercise. The story already exists. Often, a nice idea can be found just by playing around with the title. That's how this one started. Note how it follows the typical conventions of an actual fairy tale, including the "Once upon a time" style of opening. It uses the reader's familiarity with these conventions to make a powerful and funny last sentence.

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A boy, walking to school during a fierce storm, accepts a ride from his neighbor, though he is dismayed by the neighbor's gas-guzzling vehicle. The boy decides to leave the car when he sees ghostly dinosaurs.

Discussion / Activities / Other useful information:

See if the students notice how the opening lines foreshadow the ending.

The story can be used to discuss attitudes toward consumption.

Have the students come up with other model names for an eneormous car, along the lines of "Humungo."

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A boy messes around with his friend's father's time machine.

Discussion / Activities / Other useful information:

Time travel can introduce all sorts of problems and paradoxes. Ask the students to imagine what would happen if they went back in time and stopped their parents from meeting.

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A boy discovers he has an amazing ability to play a video game. He also discovers that the game is a test.

Discussion / Activities / Other useful information:

There is subtle foreshadowing on the first page with "... he doesn't come around anymore."

Note how Jimmy's progress through the waves isn't presented in one chunk, but is inerspersed with bits of action and dialogue happening around him.

The computer nerds in your class might know, or be interested in knowing, that the game ended at level 127 because that's the value of a full seven-bit number in binary.

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"The Taste of Terror"

A girl is captured by a witch who eats fear. She tries to figure out a way that she and her fellow captives can escape.

Discussion / Activities / Other useful information:

This story makes good use of sentence fragments to set the mood. The narrator is exhausted. Her thoughts come, at times, in broken pieces.

The story can launch a discussion of altruism.

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"The Cat Almost Gets a Bath"

The Sanderson family tries to bathe their cat. The cat has other ideas.

Discussion / Activities / Other useful information:

This story was inspired by an actual magazine article. Have the students use a magazine or newspaper item as a launching point for a story.

Now that the humor mostly comes from understatement.

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"Yesterday Tomorrow"

After a boy breaks his desk clock, he starts waking up each morning to find it is a day earlier than when he went to sleep. He realizes this means he can get away with anything, since nobody will remember his misdeeds. The plan works, for a while.

Discussion / Activities / Other useful information:

Ask the students what they would do if they woke up a day earlier each day.

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"Take a Whack at This"

A boy believes his father has sent him a piñata. When he and his party guests break it open, they definitely don't get any candy.

Discussion / Activities / Other useful information:

This is a good story for making large and small inferences. Why are the children screaming at the end? Why does it mean when the mother settles in her chair and sips her tea?

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"King of the Hill"

A boy bullies his way to the top of a hill, where he encounters the real king of the hill.

Discussion / Activities / Other useful information:

Have the students find interesting landscape pictures and imagine what sort of creatures they could turn into (the landscapes, not the students).

Note that in the section right after Duncan declares himself king of the hill, there is very little use of attribution in the dialogue. I'm not sure if this was intentional when I wrote the passage, but it makes things flow in a nice, tight manner.

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When a boy tears a page from a library book, he finds himself banned -- by the books.

Discussion / Activities / Other useful information:

Confession -- I wrote this one for the amusement of librarians.

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A girl gets a bargain set of braces.

Discussion / Activities / Other useful information:

Note how Shelly meets a listless girl the first time she enters the waiting room, and then, when she herself becomes listless, she meets a happy girl coming for the first time. Older readers will be able to see the parallel.

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A boy doesn't follow the instructions very well when he builds a turkey call. He ends up calling something much less desirable.

Discussion / Activities / Other useful information:

Follow up this story with the classic test that begins "Read all instructions carefully before starting," followed by a series of steps that involve writing things on a piece of paper, and ending with "Ignore all instructions except for the first and last one."

Point out to the students that when they are writing a story, it's fine to invent a magazine (or a TV show, book, or video game) for the character, such as this example of Time Wasters.

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A boy sneaks into a movie that uses a new technology, allowing the audience to actually feel what is happening in the movie. This is probably not a good technology for horror films.

Discussion / Activities / Other useful information:

As in many stories of this sort, the main character almost decides to get out of the situation before it is too late.

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A boy encounters the sopurce of bad luck, and decides to try to stop him.

Discussion / Activities / Other useful information:

"What would happen if there was no bad luck?"

Have the students write a story where they personify some other concept that comes from a common phrase.

Older students might appreciate the way the ending points to an infinite series. Share this Augustus De Morgan poem with them:

Great fleas have little fleas upon their backs to bite 'em,
And little fleas have lesser fleas, and so ad infinitum.
And the great fleas themselves, in turn, have greater fleas to go on;
While these again have greater still, and greater still, and so on.

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"Rattled Nerves"

A boy skips out on his class as they tour a reptile exhibit, and discovers there are things in the woods far scarier than snakes.

Discussion / Activities / Other useful information:

The story can launch a discussion of phobias.

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"Smart Little Suckers"

A boy find that he gets smarter every time the strange mosquitos in his back yard bite him. He becomes incredibly smart, but not smart enough to see his mistake.

Discussion / Activities / Other useful information:

Note how vocabulary and dialogue is used to portray the different levels of intelligence the character experiences.

See if the students can come up with a list of counters that roll over. Ask them to think up a story where the mosquito bites change or enhance some other ability.

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"Overdue onto Others"

A girl checks out a personality from the library. She likes it so much, she decides not to return it, so she claims it was lost. The library has a special response to this.

Discussion / Activities / Other useful information:

This might be an enjoyable way to introduce the rules of the library.

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"Put on Your Happy Face"

A boy achieves his dream of becoming a clown. When the time comes to choose his clown face, he learns why even happy clowns seem sad.

Discussion / Activities / Other useful information:

There really is a registry of clown faces painted on eggs. Sudents might enjoy reseaching this.

The teacher's name is an intentional reference to the great clown, Emmett Kelly.

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When a girl brings a mood ring to school, she discovers it can reveal a lot more than just feelings.

Discussion / Activities / Other useful information:

See what inferences students can draw about Deanne after reading the story.

Note that an entire story, with all the traditional elements, including plot, conflict, opening, and ending, can occur in a very short space.

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"Keep your Spirits Up"

After a boy makes a fatally bad decision on a roller coaster, he tries to fit in with the other ghosts.

Discussion / Activities / Other useful information:

Compare the active ghost in this story to the passive ghost in the previous story, "Moods."

There are a variety of classic pranks and initiation rituals, such as the snipe hunt. See if your students know any.

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"Sting, Where Is Thy Death?"

When a boy's creepy cousin tries to use magic to mend his broken ankle, she ends up bringing something unpleasant back to life.

Discussion / Activities / Other useful information:

The title is a bit of word play, of course, and an allusion to a well-known line from Corinthinas.

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