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The Scary Stuff: What’s Really Too Hard for Kids To Handle?

There are always limits we place on children’s reading.  Sometimes those limits can be pretty arbitrary. Children of course, aren’t necessarily interested in why we make those limits. They just want to read what they want to read,

One reason we place limits  is that it makes us uncomfortable. At least, it makes a lot of us uncomfortable. Mostly we want to protect our children from the evil of the world, not give them the opportunities to unsettle or terrify themselves.

Fear is a strange creature. I can hear gleeful stories about undead robot zombies daily from my seven year old, but faced with a bumblebee he freezes. The line is very thin sometimes. Larry the pet werewolf has joined my son’s odd cast of imaginary friends. Sometimes Larry is a friendly puppy. Sometimes he’s a protector. And sometimes he’s scary, mostly to my five year old, who gets freaked out by the howling in the dark at bedtime. We appear to be stuck with Larry, a creature who embodies all the contradictions to the ways my son deals with fear. Kids’ reactions to what they read and what they see can be so different from ours, and what we find disturbing may be a key clicking open a lock on a door to a room they need to visit. Alternatively, it could really frighten them. But life is less rich if we avoid everything that might evoke emotions that can be difficult to deal with.

As a parent I see these contradictions and the accompanying discomfort differently than I do as a librarian. As a librarian I might try to guide a child to something that seems more age appropriate or warn them that the book she’s chosen has intense content, and that it’s okay to put it down, but I don’t think I would completely refuse to give a child a book. I have to trust that parents are aware of and supportive of their child’s reading. As a parent I have absolutely told my kids that there are some books, movies, television, that they are not ready for yet. The Monster Kid is angling to watch Night of the Living Dead, and that is not going to happen.

It’s important to include kids in the discussions of why you think they aren’t ready to read or watch something. They can learn from you, and you can learn from them. The knowledge can make us better at understanding the other person and respecting boundaries. And to express all this better than I really can, I’m going to share a link to a blog entry by Mini Lee, who I think has some interesting things to say about all of this from the kid’s point of view. As uncomfortable as some of the books and media kids are interested in may make you, the essential thing is that there has to be enough trust and respect there to be able to hold a conversation about it.

The Horror of Science Gone Awry

An article in The Guardian suggested that the absence of the supernatural monster from books generally considered horror fiction could be the end of the genre. I must respectfully disagree. While Becky Siegel Spratford, considered the expert on reader’s advisory in horror fiction, suggests that supernatural forces must be present for a book to be considered part of the horror genre, here at MonsterLibrarian we have always taken a broader view of what constitutes horror fiction (some would argue, I’m sure, that our definition is too broad). In fact, when we started out, with a much smaller number of genre divisions, one of the categories we had was “science gone awry”. It can be as terrifying as any supernatural creature, that’s for sure. We’ve since integrated the titles from that category into other subgenres, because it’s now such a common source of monstrosity. I confess that the books I remember as most terrifying from my own teenage years included not just Stephen King’s early works, but science fiction stories such as Asimov’s “Nightfall”, and medical thrillers, like Robin Cook’s Godplayer and Mutation. The natural world at its most frightening, and the dangerous obsessions of the mad scientist intent on altering, extending, or creating life–these are the stuff of terror, fear, and dread. And they have been for ages.

The advancement of science and the expansion of our world have changed us, and the source of our fears is now much more often the evil we do to each other and to the world around us, and how it rebounds to us. That’s not to say that we have abandoned our fears of attack from outside or supernatural forces, but mad science is hardly new to the horror genre. Critique of social, economic, and political issues isn’t new to the genre either, and the existence of that critique in a text doesn’t determine whether it’s horror–the emotional punch to the gut does that. Horror does not have to be, as the author of the Guardian’s article suggests, drawn from ancient fears and folktales, or from gothic novels. If it’s not somehow situated in the real, or at least the believable, then the fantastical elements are unlikely to succeed. In spite of the occasional moaning and groaning that horror is dead, it’s not. Like so many of the iconic monsters of the genre, as long as there are things to fear, it will rise. And, to answer the question the author poses of where we will find books that really scare us now… well, in a genre as broad as horror, there is a place for everyone to get their literary chills. And if you’d like some recommendations, we at MonsterLibrarian.com are happy to oblige.

Summer Reading Is Killing Me! Part 2: Tween and Middle School Reads

It turns out I actually don’t have to do much work to provide you with a good list of scary books for summer reading. Andrea Lipinski has done most of the work for me in the New York Public Library’s blog with a post titled Dark, Creepy, Spooky, Scary Crossover Books.

We’ve actually reviewed a bunch of these here, although I’m not sure we completely agree with her age recommendations. You might check out our reviews to see what we thought. There are some great books on the list, though!

Reviewed here:

Eighth Grade Bites: The Chronicles of Vladimir Tod (first in a series)

Anya’s Ghost by Vera Brogsol (this was a Stoker nominee last year in the YA category)

A Tale Dark and Grimm by Adam Gidwitz

Tales from Lovecraft Middle School: Professor Gargoyle by Charles Gilman (first in a series)

Coraline by Neil Gaiman

The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman (a Newbery Award winner)

Rot & Ruin by Jonathan Maberry (a Stoker Award winner in the YA category last year, and first in a series– followed by Dust & Decay)

A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness (a Stoker nominee last year)

Three Quarters Dead by Richard Peck

Zom-B by Darren Shan (first in a series that will eventually comprise thirteen books)

Strange Angels by Lili St. Crow (first in a series)

 

Here are some additional suggestions from our own Middle School List. With a very few exceptions, we’ve reviewed nearly all of these:

 

Zombies

Generation Dead by Daniel Waters

Generation Dead: Kiss of Life by Daniel Waters

Rot and Ruin by Jonathan Maberry

The Dead by Charlie Higson

The Enemy by Charlie Higson

Zombie Queen of Newbery High by Amanda Ashby

You Are So Undead to Me by Stacey Jay

Zombie Blondes by Brian James

 

Supernatural Horror

The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin

The Egypt Game by Zilpha Keately Snyder

The Near Witch by Victoria Schwab

Cryer’s Cross by Lisa McMann

The Seer of Shadows by Avi

The Other Side of Dark by Sarah Smith

Blackbriar, Fingers and others by William Sleator

Stranger With My Face, I Know What You Did Last Summer, and others by Lois Duncan

Ghosts I Have Been, Thirteen Past Dead, and others by Richard Peck

Monster’s Proof by Richard Lewis

Skeleton Man and others by Joseph Bruchac

Demonglass by Rachel Hawkins

Bad Girls Don’t Die by Katie Alender

From Bad to Cursed by Katie Alender

Mercy by Rebecca Lim

 

Vampires

Sucks to be Me: The all-true confessions of Mina Hamilton, Vampire (maybe) by Kimberly Pauley

Still Sucks to be Me: The all-true confessions of Mina Smith, Teen Vampire by Kimberly Pauley

Parliament of Blood by Justin Richards

Blood Ninja by Nick Lake

Look for Me by Moonlight by Mary Downing Hahn

The Silver Kiss by Annette Curtis Klause

Vampire Loves by Joann Sfar (graphic novel)

 

Werewolves

Blood and Chocolate by Annette Curtis Klause

Wereworld by Curtis Jobling

Under My Skin by Judith Graves

 

Anthologies

Bloody Horowitz by Anthony Horowitz (collection)

Fear by R.L.  Stine