Kathleen Hale

media release: It was the perfect tabloid story: two 12-year-old suburban girls in Wisconsin stab their friend 19 times at a birthday sleepover, leaving her for dead. When caught hours later, the would-be tween murderers, who thankfully failed in their mission to kill, said they did it to appease Slenderman, a crowd-sourced internet demon. But in this deeply researched and compassionate new book SLENDERMAN: ONLINE OBSESSION, MENTAL ILLNESS, AND THE VIOLENT CRIME OF TWO MIDWESTERN GIRLS author Kathleen Hale goes beyond the sensational elements of the crime to tell a more complex and multidimensional story about childhood mental illness, the punitive and politicized American judicial system, the trials of adolescence, and the seductive power of the internet’s far corners.