Yet Another NASTYbook: MiniNasties (Nastybook Series), Vol. 3 Book

The NASTYest things come in the smallest packages. With ultra-ultra-short stories, preposterous little poems and dialogues, even one-sentence tales, Barry Yourgrau s twisted mind cooks up a wealth of wicked fancies from just a few lines. Imagine a kid swallowing his cell phone (ring ring). Or a girl eating up the furniture (yum yum). This third in the NASTYbook series is the funniest, grossest, most wild and weird yet! Off-the-wall design and black-and-white illustrations add to the cracked Twilight Zone that s Yougrau s oh-so NASTYworld.

Kirkus Reviews

After trying his hand at a novel, Yourgrau returns to the format of his first NastyBook (2005), offering several dozen surreal mini-melodramas, most running only a page or two with the occasional typographic flight of fancy, deliberately lame poem or (one hopes) consciously ugly line drawing chucked in for variety. The author's gift for bizarre premises is on full display: One child turns into a giraffe in the middle of her birthday party, another wonders why his father has taken to dressing up as the hind end of a horse, yet another wiggles his ears so vigorously that he takes flight. In other episodes, a diner starts falling apart piece by piece, an evil spirit takes up residence in a vending machine, two dweebs end their friendship after falling in love with the same imaginary dream girl and much, much more. Younger children looking for scary-but not too scary-tales and older reluctant readers will fall on Yourgrau's latest with glad cries. (Short stories. 7-9)