Rowley Jefferson's Awesome Friendly Spooky Stories is the 3rd installment of The Rowley Jefferson spin-off series. It was made by Jeff Kinney and published by Abram Books on March 16, 2021. ^[1] It consists of 14 comical spooky stories written by Rowley himself. As of Common Sense Media, it was rated 3/5 stars. ^[2][3]

Plot[edit]

There are 14 scary stories in this book ^[4][5][6]. Here are them summarized below after a warning from Rowley about it's contents ^[7]:

1. The Changing, a boy named Rowan who likes to play with toys is always bullied when he brings them with him to recess. ^[8] One day, he feels a tinging sensation in his armpit so he excuses himself from class to go the bathroom. ^[9] When he goes to the bathroom, he notices one large hair on his armpit. ^[10] Scared, Rowan returns to class and decides to wait until he gets home to pull the hair out with tweezers. ^[11] But when he returns home and goes to get that hair out, his armpits are full of hair. ^[11] Suddenly, he suffers a extreme amount of hair growth throughout his entire body. ^[12] He finds a hair remover bottle in the bathroom cabinet buts passes out from the fumes 2 seconds after opening it. ^{[12] [11]}. He wakes up in bed and his parents come in and tell him he is a werewolf and they are werewolf's too. ^[13]. This horrifies Rowan but his parents say that as long as he was on top of his grooming, no one would know he was a werewolf. ^[14] But with the humorous twist of all of these stories, Rowan convinces his parents to stop hiding who they really were from the world and it ends with a happily ever after; The bullies at recess don't bother him out of fear when he brings toys to recess the next day. ^[14]
2. The Prankster, it speaks of a prankster in a unspecified European seaside village named Jasper who played pranks on the inhabitants, even his own family. ^[15] One day, he decides to fill donuts up with toothpaste at the bakery and goes to do so accordingly. But when he opens the platter, his hands goes through it. ^[15] He goes outside and looks at a mirror and notices he is invisible; also no one seems to respond to his presence. ^[16] He believes that he is invisible and strips to his underwear and makes a total fool of himself in public. ^[17] Then, he sees many people in black clothing and he follows them. ^{[18] [1][19]} He then discovers he is at his own funeral. ^[20] According to the priest doing the ceremony, Jasper was killed by a fighting strike while toilet papering someones house. ^[21] In the end, it is revealed that the people pranked Jasper by making him believe that he was a ghost. ^{[22] [23]} Then, they prank him again saying that a meteor wiped them out and that they including Jasper are all ghosts. ^[24][25][26] Believing this, Jasper jumps off a lighthouse with intent to "float" to Paris as ghosts do that but obviously he is not successful and the last words of the chapter allude to Jasper falling to his death. ^[27]
3. Ghost Friend, it speaks of two friends named Rusty and Gabe who liked to watch football on TV. ^[28] However one day, Rusty suffers a unspecified death which makes Gabe sad and wishes that he could come back. ^[29] But then, Rusty's ghost appears which cheers up Gabe but after many moments` of this ghost-human friendship interfering with Gabe's daily life, he decides to cut the friendship. ^[30] But Rusty guilt trips Gabe into forgiving him which ruins Gabe's educational journey. ^[31]
4. The Biter, a young female child named Lili suffers a behavior issue of biting people. ^[32] Her desperate parents go a pediatrician who reads the results of her medical tests wrong and says that she is a vampire. ^[33] The doctor writes a note to the Lili's school which causes the school board to make many benefiting accommodations for her sake. ^{[34] [35]} In the end, the medical mistake is revealed but her parents decide to not do anything about it. ^{[36] [37]}
5. The Human Head, this story in the book gives a humorous twist to the Headless Horsemen folktale with middle school and modernity. It speaks of Anders who has just a head and not a body. He is starting out at middle school which is hard for him but he befriends the Headless Horsemen who then is called Gunther. ^{[38][39] [40]} However in February, a new attractive girl named Prudence switch's to the school that Anders and Gunther go to and with the Valentines Dance simultaneously approaching the two decide to pretend to be the same person and ask Prudence out. ^[41] Gunther puts Anders on his neck hole so it appears that they are the same person. ^[41] They go out with Prudence but it backfires when Gunther unintentionally falls over during a congo line. ^[42] After the party, Anders dates Prudence which makes Gunther evil and turns him into the Headless Horsemen of today. ^[43]
6. The Scanner, a new airport scanner is made that can scan multiple people at once. ^[44] However, when everyone comes out, they are skeletons that are somehow still alive. They learn many benefits to having just bones for a body but they are also a lot of bad stuff to that too so the skeletons raid the airport and throw the scanner off a cliff with turns them back to normal without their clothing. ^[45]
7. The Cellar, this story takes place in simple times with a peasant boy named Rafe and his parents that live in a hut in the middle of the woods. ^[46] They are a happy family and the only rule is to not go in the cellar. When Rafe becomes a adult, they reveal they hid into the woods and pretended to live in Neolithic times so to not be addicted to "screens". But, Rafe gets a phone so the parents realize they were right to leave the modern world behind. ^[47]
8. The Nap, a old woman named Fannie lives in a retirement home and her family never visits her. One day, she takes a nap. Her strayed family goes to her watch to watch a football game and think that the napping Fannie is dead. They bury her and go watch the game but Fannie gets out by pressing a senior assistance button she ordered on TV some weeks prior. In the end, her good-for-nothing family turns affectionate but Fannie dies and no one noticed until the end of week. ^[48]
9. The Stain, A boy named Robbie goes to the mall with his parents under the pretense that they'll have fun. However, Robbie's parents go to stores that to him "only grow-ups like." ^[49] Seeing their son isn't having fun, his father gives Robbie money to buy them and himself ice cream. ^[50] Robbie gets 1 rocky roads for him and strawberry his dad but drops his own cone. ^[51] He decides to pretend that the strawberry flavored ice cream was his and the rocky road (the cone that dropped) was his father's. He feels guilty about lying on the way home and then notices a pink stain on his t-shirt.The stain gets larger by the second so he goes to bed but has nightmares about anthropomorphic strawberries chasing him through the woods. ^[52] When he wakes all of his family's clothing is pink but he tries to run away but his parents stop him and Robbie confesses to the lie. ^[53] They go back to the mall and all of them get rocky road cones but the father is allergic to nuts and the whole thing starts again. ^[1]
10. A Mummy, a Egyptian pharaoh named Mekh dies and his subjects mummify him to prepare him to the afterlife. ^[54] When he wakes from his deadly slumber, Mekh is in a museum and he is mad and commits many acts of terrorism in the human world. Meanwhile, another pharaoh is discovered named Khaba who becomes famous but then becomes irrelevant. ^[55] Khaba moves in with Mekh and watch TV as roommates. ^[56]
11. The Science Project, a boy named Victor in the 1950s always wanted two things: a pet and to win his schools science event. ^[57] But his parents always refuse to give him a dog and he can never seem to win the event 1th place

References[edit]