Jason Segel Reads ‘Nightmares!’

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Multitalent is a funny thing — ­possessing it and beholding it. Often, the multitalented are cautious, aware that special judgment awaits, cocked and spring-loaded in a way it wouldn’t be if they had stuck to their original skill. We are more inclined to buy your banjo album or artisanal fig bars if you’re a movie star, but also more inclined to zero in on their flaws: too much banjo. If the multi happens to be one of those people who push their projects on us like a corn gavage down a duck’s throat — eat this, buy this, love this, don’t you love this? — our suspicions only deepen.

Jason Segel is no doubt your favorite kind of multitalented person. He acts, writes, sings and navigates varied entertainments with an unassuming touch. He’s amiable. He’s large. He gives the impression of “Hey, I’m just trying out some stuff because it makes me happy, and maybe it’ll make you happy too!” Also noteworthy is Segel’s affection for delighting children. He was the voice of the villain in “Despicable Me” and took on the heroic task of reviving the Muppets franchise. In his first middle-grade novel, “Nightmares!,” written with Kirsten Miller and read by Segel for the audiobook, he aims to take kids on a trip that will make their skin crawl.

Charlie Laird lives in a world of fear. His mom died three years earlier, when he was 8, and his ache for her surges throughout the story. He describes his “shriveled” heart and the moments pierced by missing her. Her passing is rendered in flashbacks that reveal the depth of his loss but are handled in language that feels right for a young reader. Charlie has a new stepmother, Charlotte, who he suspects is a witch — a vegetarian, herbalist witch who wants to steal his dad; his little brother, Jack; and most painfully of all, his memories of his mother. His anger at Jack for loving Charlotte is the best depiction of his enduring grief. Charlie works hard not to face his sadness. And this is where the trouble starts.

Everything in Charlie’s life begins to slant toward the ominous. Previously benign things now threaten him. When your mom dies, a pot of soup stirred by your stepmother can easily morph into a belching caldron reeking of “dog farts.” The sense that he’s stuck in one place while his family has moved on enrages him. Charlotte’s kale-blended pancakes repel him. Her purple, vine-choked mansion embarrasses him. Her store, an herbarium filled with seedpods, engulfs him in suspicion. And the toadstool on top is that her relentless patience with Charlie is his biggest irritation of all. Speaking of mushrooms, the language shines most when describing the fetid muck of the natural world: dead rats wrapped in spider webs, a tangle of creeping thyme, carrion beetles.

When his “darkness” starts to overwhelm him, a fraught reality sets in, toggling back and forth between his waking life and dream life. Things that torture him during the day visit his sleep, and vice versa. Well drawn is the depiction of the period before sleep as the most anxious time, as unsettling as the ensuing nightmare. The book explores the link between this idea and how our fear of experiencing painful feelings is often worse than the feelings themselves.

In the tradition of buddy narratives like “The Goonies,” Charlie and three plucky friends are sent through the netherworld to triumph over individual nightmares. The message here is a good one: Face your fears before they control you. The most memorable character is Paige, whose hair smells like strawberries, and who carries with her a panic that she will end up like her own mother, a woman who got “so sad that she had to stay in a hospital.” The empathic relationship between Charlie and Paige is rich, and I hope will expand over the course of the next two planned installments of “Nightmares!”

In Segel’s reading, we get many versions of him — bellowing villain, hissing snakes, exhausted dad and wisecracking stepmom. He is best at portraying the kids, morose Charlie in particular. Segel’s performance throughout is more navy-blue-to-black comedy than it is scary, with an aristocratic gorgon blaming “cable television” for kids’ nightmares and the witch calling Jack a “dork.” A collection of fruit-throwing, nose-picking goblins and a flesh-eating cat are nefariously witty, but not terrifying. The presiding witch in the netherworld is more imperious than frightening — presumably by design, because of revelations about her that arrive later. I wished some of the frights could have been amped up in these passages — more creep-outs, less action — but I realize that restraint means sensitive listeners won’t be scared off from continuing.

Adventure narratives risk that ­grizzly-bear-in-a-hammock sag toward the middle. Though the action-packed center of “Nightmares!” probably won’t be tedious for middle graders, I did listen through a few confusing pivots of plot, and pilings-on of incidents heading to the finish. Fantastical, multiworld narratives are tough, even for the multitalented. But Segel exudes an exuberant joy in the telling and an absence of cynicism that suits a writer of middle-grade fiction. Childhood is frightening even if your mother doesn’t die and you don’t move into a purple mansion. Kids need to hear someone explain the darkness and the light. Charlie Laird, who learns that fear will eat you alive if you feed it, makes an impression, and I think readers will want to accompany him again, especially if he sticks to his strong suits: dead rats, mushroom-sprouting couches and a firm grasp on just how terrifying our own feelings can be.