For Ages
8 to 12

Side-splittingly funny, spine-chillingly spooky, this companion to a Newbery Honor–winning anthology The Dark Thirty is filled with bad characters who know exactly how to charm.

From the author's note that takes us back to McKissack's own childhood when she would listen to stories told on her front porch... to the captivating introductions to each tale, in which the storyteller introduces himself and sets the stage for what follows... to the ten entertaining tales themselves, here is a worthy successor to McKissack's The Dark Thirty. In "The Best Lie Ever Told," meet Dooley Hunter, a trickster who spins an enormous whopper at the State Liar's contest. In "Aunt Gran and the Outlaws," watch a little old lady slickster outsmart Frank and Jesse James. And in "Cake Norris Lives On," come face to face with a man some folks believe may have died up to twenty-seven different times!

An Excerpt fromPorch Lies

Mis Martha June was a person I thought incapable of telling a porch lie. I was wrong. Always prim and proper, she was a churchgoing woman who spoke in quiet, refined tones with her mouth pursed in the shape of a little O. She was never without a dainty pocket handkerchief tucked in her sleeve, which she gingerly used to dab perspiration from her brow. A woman of Mis Martha June’s qualities did not sweat.

She owned a bakery that was known for having the best coconut cream pies in the world—same recipe her mother used, and her mother before her. And no customer was more faithful than a wily character named Pete Bruce, about whom she loved to tell stories. He was considered the prince of confidencers, and the idea of Mis Martha June having anything to do with the likes of him was about as odd as a fox and a hen striking up a friendship.

“Pete Bruce was the worst somebody who ever stood in shoes,” Mis Martha June always began in…

Under the Cover