- Chapter Books
- Ages 9–12
- Horror
Crater Lake
Book 1 of 2 in Crater LakeView the full series
A Year Six residential trip turns into the school trip from hell when Lance and his friends realise the classmates and teachers falling asleep are waking up wrong. A funny-scary alien body-snatcher horror with a golden rule: don't fall asleep.
- Best for9–12
- FormatChapter
- Length254 pp
- Read aloud~3 hr35 min
The vibe
What it’s like.
Style
- Conversational
- Comedic
Tone
- Scary
- Funny
- Suspenseful
- Exciting
Themes
Experience meters
What’s it about?
The story.
Lance can't wait for the Year Six residential to Crater Lake activity centre – a last hurrah with his friends before high school splits them up. But the trip goes wrong before they even arrive: a bloodstained man throws himself in front of the coach, screaming at them to turn back. At the centre the staff are strange, the rules are stranger, and then comes the golden rule nobody explains – don't fall asleep. One by one, classmates and teachers drift off and wake up changed, blank-eyed and marching into the night, and Lance realises something is taking people over from the inside. Cut off, outnumbered and running on no sleep, he and his mismatched gang have to work out what the aliens want and how to stop them before the whole class is lost. Jennifer Killick's Crater Lake is a fast, funny, genuinely creepy sci-fi horror – the school-trip nightmare readers will race through and then dare each other to read at night.
Fit check
Right for your child?
Where it lands by age
Aimed at confident 9-12 readers who enjoy a scare; independent reading fits 9 up, and it works read aloud from about 8 for children who like being spooked. The relentless don't-fall-asleep tension and alien body-snatching make it a poor bedtime choice and too intense for very sensitive readers.
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- Best fit · 9–12
- Read aloud · 8–11
- Independent · 9–12
Prose load
Moderate
Visual support
None
Reluctant-reader friendly
Very
Read-aloud quality
Strong
Works well for
- Reading aloud
- Reluctant readers
Preview before sharing if a child is sensitive to: scary imagery, violence.
Bedtime suitability
1 / 5 · Wide awake
Sensitive-child
2 / 5 · Use judgement
Graphic intensity
2 / 5 · Mild
Best for
- Funny scary
- Reluctant readers
- Goosebumps fans
- Horror adventure
Avoid if
- Wants gentle bedtime
- Sensitive to scares
Particularly good for children who are…
- Reluctant reader
- Making friends
Why it lands
Why they love it.
Why kids love it
A school trip that turns into a fight for survival, with a rule that ratchets up the tension on every page: fall asleep and you wake up one of them. The scares are proper creepy, the gang bicker and joke even as things fall apart, and Lance is an ordinary kid you can't help rooting for.
- Surviving danger
- Friendship and belonging
- The underdog winning
- Breaking the rules safely
Why parents love it
A tightly paced sci-fi horror that turns reluctant readers into page-turners. Killick pitches the scares to thrill rather than traumatise, keeps real humour running through the terror, and builds a diverse gang who learn to rely on each other.
- Quick to read
- Shared humour
In the series
Crater Lake.
2 books · open the series →
About the author
Jennifer Killick.
If you liked this
Three ways out of this book.
If you liked this, try…
Lateral matches. Same shelf, different texture.
Where to go next…
Escalation reads — a step up in scale, silliness, or stakes.
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