The Ocean at the End of the Lane/ Neil Gaiman / 181 pgs

I enjoyed my second foray into horror much better than my first. This is an interesting little tale about a boy who lives on the edges of a sometimes magical, sometimes dark fantasy world that is unknown to almost everyone else around him. He is befriended by a neighbor girl a few years older than him and becomes unwittingly drawn into her family's fight to contain some dark creatures that are threatening the human world. Things get pretty tense as our narrator (whose name I don't think we ever learn) is attacked from all sides. While I thought this story was well done and entertaining, I found myself wishing the narrator was a few years older. For one thing, he seemed to know an awful lot for a 7-year-old, including the word "chitinous." But more than that, I couldn't stop feeling doubly horrified that all these terrible things were happening to such a young child. It was easier for me to imagine him being ten instead of seven, and that made me feel mildly better:-)