Author: David Lubar
Publisher: Starscape Books/Tor
Binding: Hardcover
Publication Date: 2007
David Lubar’s Curse of the Campfire Weenies and Other Warped and Creepy Tales is a straightforward collection of short stories. This is the third book of short stories following Land of the Lawn Weenies and Invasion of the Road Weenies. There are a total of 35 stories and a total of 199 pages in Campfire Weenies. This may give you an idea how short some of these stories are – some are just two-page vignettes that give you a specific feeling or idea and then move on to the next. Obviously I’m not going to go over every story or we’d be here all day. I’ve chosen a few that I found to be particularly apt, poignant or funny.
In The Tunnel of Terror, Lubar examines a commonly held principle that is very closely related to the law of conservation of energy; energy cannot be created or destroyed, just changed. For this story, Rachel is not a fan of horror, not horror movies, not horror houses and most definitely not the Tunnel of Terror. As is usually the case, her friends talk her into it. So that I don’t ruin the story for you I’ll just say that Rachel learns the hard way that avoiding something does not make it go away. This could be interpreted a couple of ways; the evils of procrastination or facing your fears head on.
I was particularly fond of Mrs. Barunki. This one was very short but clever; you can almost see the twinkle in the author’s eyes as he writes this one down. Mrs. Barunki may be retiring but she will never be forgotten.
Sniffles is much more of an adult story than the others. Sure kids may enjoy it as a take on children versus adults but this also plays on the mostly adult fear of conspiracy. These days you cannot even open a newspaper without reading about some sort of conspiracy or other. Has Lubar discovered another?
For the most part these were all short, but entertaining little stories with a moral but don’t really preach. Which means those that these moral stories are intended for will not avoid them as something that is too preachy to be enjoyable. Of course, the title might be a tip-off here. There are some, however, that either just follow up on the author’s ‘what if?’ or move a bit upward to the older kids range where there is no distinct moral but the story can be illuminating regardless. This is a perfect book to keep around for those odd few minutes of waiting as each story can be read quite quickly and there is no need to stop in the middle to move on. Bonus extras include notations from the author himself regarding how each story came about as well as a discussion guide, useful for using these stories in a classroom setting.
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