Leaving the Dark Side for Lighter Kids’ Fare

Karen Wong sat in the morning sunshine reading silly verses and concocting an excuse to give her boss for taking more than two hours to make photocopies at an Irvine Kinko’s.

The fault belonged to suspense author Dean Koontz of Newport Beach. If Wong hadn’t seen the sign on a nearby store announcing a book-signing later Saturday morning, she’d have been in and out of Kinko’s as fast as a signature.

“I’ve read more than 30 of his books, and I’ve got 20 of them,” said Wong, 23, of West Covina, as she thumbed through Koontz’s latest book--a surprising collection of children’s poems. “They’re really cute. They remind me of Shel Silverstein.”

It wasn’t exactly a “Harry Potter” moment, but Saturday’s book-signing marked a departure for Koontz, whose white-knuckle novels of murder and suspense have sold more than 225 million copies worldwide.

Unless you count Jilly, an annoying girl who gets eaten in a pie, or the hubris-filled wizard who meets an untimely end, no one dies in “The Paper Doorway” (HarperCollins, $17.95), a collection of sometimes macabre silliness illustrated by Phil Parks.

The book is Koontz’s second for children in five years. The first, also with Parks, was “Santa’s Twin,” a 1996 best-selling Christmas tale about Bob Claus, a Grinch-like ill-intentioned curmudgeon, and a case of polar sibling rivalry that almost derails Christmas. Koontz also teamed up with Parks on 1988’s “Oddkins,” his first children’s book, now out of print.

On Saturday, Koontz’s reputation as an adult writer preceded him. The more than 300 people who filed through Irvine’s Whale of a Tale children’s bookshop were dominated by fans of his suspense novels. Many were there to load up on Christmas gifts and said they were surprised by the book of silly couplets and other rhymes from a writer whose books usually explore dark elements of human nature.

“I’ve always considered him to be a grand master of science fiction,” said Virginia Mead of Irvine. “But it’s the same imagination that you find in children’s books--you just create your own world.”

Koontz said he hasn’t given up writing the suspense tales that have made him rich enough to buy a house on Newport Beach’s Spyglass Hill, a “beach house” on Balboa Peninsula and a new mansion-in-the-making in Newport Coast. In fact, a new adult novel, “One Door Away From Heaven” (HarperCollins, $26.95), is due in stores the day after Christmas.

Rather, the children’s stories and poems are diversions, something to be spun out in slow moments during the 8- to 12-hour workdays he spends on his novels.

“I’ve always liked children’s books,” Koontz, 56, said in an interview earlier in the week. “One of the three novels that had the greatest effect on me was ‘Wind in the Willows.’ I reread that book every three or four years.”