Children's Books discussion

Hi,

I'm looking for help identifying a short sci-fi/horror story about bugs called Nergs that "eat" a boy's body, and from the bits it "eats," it assembles a doppelganger of the boy, who then replaces him.

It seems to have been written around the early to mid '60s. I believe it was published in the Weekly Reader school news magazine around 1968 (perhaps 4th grade level), and it may also have been in Boys' Life around the same time.

It was quite a scary story for younger readers! Thank you very much in advance for your help.

Eek! I wouldn't be brave enough to read that story now!
The only author that I can think of that was writing scary SF for kids at the time is William Sleator. But I have no idea where one would find short stories.

I did find someone asked the same question on StackExchange
https://scifi.stackexchange.com/quest...... is this you? Or maybe (digging further) here: https://scifi.stackexchange.com/quest....

Then there's the use in Rug Rats of the word Nerg for an ET planet: https://animesuperhero.com/forums/thr...

So, I tried. But I'm not very good at searching so don't take my negative results as discouragement!

Thanks, Cheryl!

I didn't write either of the questions at your two Stack Exchange links, but I did write this one, which led me to the first link:

https://scifi.stackexchange.com/quest...

I will check out William Sleator. Thanks again!

so, several ppl remember the story...
please let us know if you find it... :)

Sure thing!

I have since learned that Frank Bonham is an author who might have written something like this... but that's probably not much help.