Verwandte Artikel zu Krazyland

Krazyland - Hardcover

Romasco-Moore, Mar

 
9780593431153: Krazyland
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 0593431154 ISBN 13: 9780593431153
Verlag: Delacorte Press, 2022

Inhaltsangabe

In this scary story for fans of Neil Gaiman, The Last Kids on Earth, and Goosebumps, the only way out is krazier than you could ever imagine...

Nathan used to be terrified of Krazyland when he was a young kid. 
 
Now that he's 12, the spooky-themed arcade games aren't that bad. He even enjoys stomping on plastic spiders and battling a creepy doll with big plastic eyes. But things become scarier again when kids start to go missing from the entertainment park...
 
There's another world exists beneath Kraztown's ball pit. A world where the entertainment park's games come to life. And if he isn't careful, Nathan is going to be the next one sucked under! 
 

 

Die Inhaltsangabe kann sich auf eine andere Ausgabe dieses Titels beziehen.

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Mar Romasco-Moore is the YA author of I Am the Ghost in Your House and Some Kind of Animal, as well as Ghostographs, a collection of short stories paired with vintage photographs. Krazyland is her middle grade debut. She is also an instructor at Columbus College of Art and Design. To learn more follow @MarRomasco on Twitter.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Unhappy Birthday


There was icing in my nose. Icing in my eyes. Vanilla buttercream, with blue and purple roses. Though the roses were all smashed beyond recognition now.

I couldn’t see, but I could hear the cackling of my older cousin Jake, the one who had just shoved me face-first into a cake, and the indignant shrieks of my younger cousin Jenny, whose name had been written on said cake. I would happily have given up all cake for the rest of my life in exchange for instant transportation to anywhere else in the world.

I hadn’t even wanted to come to this birthday party. Nothing against Jenny personally, but she was four years younger than me, and so were most of her friends. I was thirteen, much too old to hang out with fourth graders.

I pushed myself up and wiped the icing from my eyes. Jake was smirking at me. He was three years older than me and at least a foot and a half taller, and he never let me forget either of those facts.

“Now, what’s all this?” My uncle Steven appeared at the door to the party room with a stack of paper plates. Jenny ran over to him, wailing, and tugged on his beige staff T-shirt.

“Nathan fell in the cake,” said Jake.

Uncle Steven gave him a skeptical look, but there was little hope he would take my side. Jake was his son, after all.

“Go cover the front desk for a while” was all he said, waving a hand.

My uncle owned this place, and Jake was working here over the summer. No doubt I’d have to work here someday, too. Uncle Steven bought it two years ago, and since then practically every family event has been held in the neon-painted party room.

My uncle could at least have owned a normal business. Maybe an ice-cream shop or a movie theater, so I would benefit from unlimited soft serve or free matinees.

Instead, he owned Krazyland.


Stealthy Vegetables


Krazyland Kids Indoor Playplace was, according to a sign in the lobby, “the perfect space for kids to get the exercise they need while having the fun they crave,” which made it sound like one of those fruit juices that have pictures of strawberries on the front but are actually like 75 percent pureed carrots.

It was a converted warehouse. Half the building was filled with mechanical games that spat out tickets you could swap for cheap plastic prizes. The other half was filled with a maze of giant plastic tubes that looped around and around like the multicolored guts of a giant.

I’d been there a few times before my uncle bought it--for instance, in second grade, when this guy Kyle invited the entire class to his birthday party. I remember he looked vaguely disappointed when I showed up. No doubt it had been his parents’ idea to include everybody, even the kids Kyle didn’t particularly like.

Kids like me.

The owner back then had been an old guy with a gray beard and weird glasses. I could remember turning in my tickets to him at the prize counter once.

“I see great promise in you, young man,” he said as he handed over my beanbag frog. “Do not be discouraged if the world does not fit you.”

I blinked at him, too confused to respond, and then scurried off to hide in a corner until Kyle’s birthday party was over.

When Uncle Steven did buy the place--I think that old guy had died or something--my parents assumed I’d be delighted. I could get in free now, after all. They thought I’d want to go every day.

True, I enjoyed some of the arcade games, though many of them had bad graphics or fiddly controls. A lot of them--like the claw machines, which held the same junk as the bottom shelf of the prize counter--were also just blatant cash grabs.

The Skee-Ball lanes and the spider-stomping game were all right. And the tubes and trampolines had been fun when I was younger.

But at the end of the day, Krazyland was just too loud, too crowded. Too full of the bane of my existence: other kids. I was much happier at home, where it was safe and quiet. If it was up to me, I’d spend all my time in my room, alone, playing Voidjumper.


Escape


The morning of Jenny’s party had been perfect. It was summer. No school. No responsibilities.

I rolled out of bed and went directly to my computer.

Fifteen minutes later, I was running for my life, pursued by ten flying eyeballs.

I didn’t dare stop to look at them, but I knew they were there. Big white blobs the size of my head, trailing optic nerves like tails. Bright green laser beams shot from their pupils, barely missing me as I dodged and swerved.

I skidded around the corner and down the next hallway.

This world was all one big house. Endless, without windows. Plenty of doors, though.

I opened one at random. Beyond it was yet another hallway, with hideous procedurally generated wallpaper. I sprinted until my energy failed.

The next door I flung open led to a kitchen. I opened every cabinet, searching for a way out of the world.

The green light of the eyeball lasers pierced through the doorway.

I tried the refrigerator. A takeout container on the top shelf yielded a mysterious specimen, which I popped into my inventory to investigate later.

The first eyeball burst into the room. I yanked the lid from a pot on the stove and held it up as a shield. Just in time. The lasers deflected harmlessly.

I was just about to run again when I spotted it. There, revealed when I’d pulled off the lid: inky blackness, a hint of stars. The void, floating in a soup tureen.

The other nine eyeballs had crowded into the kitchen now, their lasers lighting the room up like a disco. I climbed atop the stove, thankful that I still had a shrinking potion in my inventory. I drank it, jumping at the same time. A laser swept the space where my head had been an instant before. I fell into the pot.

And kept on falling right out of the world, into the void.

“Nathan!”

My mother’s voice startled me so much I dropped the controller. I fumbled for it and hit pause.

“You haven’t even had breakfast yet,” Mom said from where she stood in the doorway, disapproval radiating off her in waves.

“It’s summer break,” I said.

She sighed. Last summer, I’d spent almost every day playing Voidjumper. I’d visited hundreds of worlds, solving puzzles and collecting items to bring back to my base world, which I’d built into a perfect digital paradise, just for me.

“You need to get ready,” she said. “We’re leaving in an hour.”

I’d forgotten all about the party.

“Aw, come on,” I said. “Do I really have to go? Jenny probably doesn’t even want me there.”

“Family is important, Nathan.”

“Okay, sure,” I said, frantically trying to come up with an argument that would appeal to Mom. I was good with words--it was my main line of defense. “But remember that time I sprained my ankle on the trampolines? Krazyland is just too dangerous. Surely, you would not be so heartless as to expose your one and only precious baby boy to certain grievous bodily harm?”

Mom merely raised an eyebrow. I was losing.

“I’m just saying it would be far safer for me to stay home,” I grumbled.

“Seventy-five percent of accidents requiring hospital visits occur in the home,” said my mother flatly. “It would be safer for you not to.”


Lost . . .


Which was how I’d ended up here, in the Krazyland bathroom,...

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Verlag
Delacorte Press
Erscheinungsdatum
2022
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0593431154
ISBN 13 
9780593431153
Einband
Gebundene Ausgabe
Anzahl der Seiten
272
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
preigu
mail@preigu.de

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