Fatal Glitch: Camp Zero & Fatal Glitch: Let’s Play a Game by Erin Entrada Kelly and Eliot Schrefer

Fatal Glitch: Camp Zero
Authors: Erin Entrada Kelly & Eliot Schrefer
Illustrator: Jeannette Arroyo
Published July 21st, 2026 by Sourcebooks Stonefruit Studio

Summary: Black Mirror meets Goosebumps in the first installment of this fast-paced middle-grade horror series by New York Times-bestselling authors Erin Entrada Kelly and Eliot Schrefer featuring tales of technology gone wrong.

Eleven-year-old Sofia Mendoza is a gamer, not a camper. She should be at home building landscapes and fighting monsters in Sandbox, not deep in the forest with five other kids, who might as well be playing her favorite game in tutorial mode.

Even worse, there’s something off about this summer camp. There are creepy, mechanical vultures, cloaked NPC figures, and the only adult is Monarch, a grim woman in combat boots.

And then the game of elimination begins.

Sofia may be caught in the clutches of Camp Forestjaw, but she’ll do anything to survive. Anything. The problem is, in Forestjaw, everything you’ve ever done—no matter how long ago—comes back to you . . .

Fatal Glitch: Let’s Play a Game
Authors: Erin Entrada Kelly & Eliot Schrefer
Illustrator: Jeannette Arroyo
Publishes September 29th, 2026 by Sourcebooks Stonefruit Studio

Summary: The fast-paced middle-grade horror series by New York Times bestselling authors Erin Entrada Kelly and Eliot Schrefer featuring tales of technology gone wrong continues with this standalone installment, AI has infiltrated the newest toy craze—a stuffed animal with spooky capabilities and more sinister intentions.

Lewis’s big hope for his first day at a new school is to make a friend. He never expected that friend to wind up being a hyper-intelligent cuddly panda bear. A gift from his dad, his Panda Mo Nium is an exclusive kids-only AI toy and communication device with big ideas of his own. After other students at his school get their own robot pandas, Lewis suddenly has a friend group. When Mo begins asking Lewis to perform risky and bloody tasks, Lewis goes along despite his nerves…until the line between cute and creepy blurs and he senses evil intentions behind his AI friend’s glowing eyes. What does this robot panda really want from him and the other kids? The truth might be more frightening than Lewis ever imagined.

About the Authors:

Erin Entrada Kelly is a New York Times-bestselling author, two-time Newbery Medalist, National Book Award Finalist, and Newbery Honoree. Her work has been translated into more than a dozen languages. She has an MFA from Rosemont College and is on the faculty of the Hamline University MFA program in writing for children and young adults. She lives in Delaware.

Eliot Schrefer is a New York Times-bestselling author, has twice been a finalist for the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature, received the Stonewall Honor for best LGBTQIA+ teen book, and received the Printz Honor for best young adult book from the ALA. In naming him an Editor’s Choice, the New York Times has called his work “dazzling and big-hearted.” His science writing has appeared in Discover, Sierra, USAToday, Nautilus, and The Washington Post Magazine. He has an M.A. in Animal Studies from NYU, is on the faculty of the Hamline MFA for writing for young people, and lives with his husband in New York City.

Review: Do you have readers looking for horror and are too quickly jumping to young adult or adult horror? Yes? Me too. Do you have readers that are looking for horror but aren’t ready to jump to YA or adult because of the topics or even the length? Yes? Me too. Well, this is the series you are looking for!

The comparison to Goosebumps is perfect because this feels like a reincarnation of the same idea of horror books where the authors don’t talk down to the reader, yet keep the horror developmentally appropriate, and Kelly & Schrefer do that very well in both of these books. I also like how modern the books felt which will help readers want to pick them up and keep reading. The series is also a great length at 144 pages which is something that so many of us middle school educators have been asking for.

And the cherry on top of these books? They can lead to social commentary around technology in ways that may not have happened without them.

Discussion Questions:

How does technology play a part in both stories?
How can technology be dangerous?
What do you think the theme of each book is?
What about the structure of the books make them so fast paced and page turners?
What do you think is going on at the beginning and end of the book with the narrator?

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Camp Zero