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Book Review: Favorite Scary Stories of American Children by Richard and Judy Dockrey Young

Favorite Scary Stories of American Children by Richard and Judy Dockrey Young

August House, 1999

ISBN: 0874835631

Availability: New and Used

Favorite Scary Stories of American Children is a collection of 23 short and scary stories told in the oral tradition, ranging from the truly creepy and frightening to pun-filled groaners. the authors, who are professional storytellers, chose the stories based on the enthusiastic demands of their young audiences. The age-appropriateness of each story is indicated using a code of pictorial symbols (for ages 5-6, 7-8, and 9-10), with the key to the code on the page opposite the title page. All the stories are intended to be readable by nine and ten year olds, but the authors note that stories aimed at younger children may not hold the interest of independent readers. Because of its attempt to cover a wide range of ages, cultures, and interest levels, the book is a mixed bag, including versions of classic scary stories like “The Red Velvet Ribbon” and folktales like “The Bloodsucker”, as well as some that feel like story flotsam, such as “Stop the Coffin.” This book would be a great resource for storytimes or for teaching storytelling to children, and has a variety of possible interdisciplinary connections for elementary classrooms.

An afterword for parents, librarians, and teachers addresses the value of scary stories for children as well as some of the concerns and issues that may come up in the telling and reading of scary stories. Origins of the stories and a pronunciation guide for regional terms are also included in the back of the book.

Favorite Scary Stories of American Children will appeal to children who have worn out Alvin Schwartz’s Scary Stories books, as well as to parents, teachers, and librarians looking for a way to give their kids the shivers. Recommended for elementary school libraries, public libraries, and families. Contains: violence

Posted on December 10, 2018 by , Reply

Book Review: The Mind Altar: A Novel of Subterranean Terror by Michael Just

 

The Mind Altar: A Novel of Subterranean Terror by Michael Just

Giddings Street Press, 2018

ISBN 13:9781530441297

Available: Paperback, Kindle edition

 

The Mind Altar: A Novel of Subterranean Terror by Michael Just is head and shoulders above most novels in the science fiction, horror and mystery genres. The author describes scenes in just the right amount of detail to place the reader within the story.  He reveals the personalities and motives of the characters gradually, keeping the reader engaged.  His plot has twists and turns that keep the reader continually guessing about the story’s outcome.  The ending is no less complicated and intriguing, seemingly doubling back on itself three times.

Taking place in the near future, the U.S. government sends a team of black-ops mercenaries to the desert in the Four Corners region of the country.  Communications with a secret facility buried in a mountain, called Bright Angel, went dead a few weeks earlier.  Each of the seven-team members has a special skill, and knows only part of their mission.  Our protagonist, Eurydice Wiles, is an expert in resurrecting programs and data from crashed computers.  She is buttoned up, avoids emotional contact and has no memories from the age of seven to eight.

As Eury and her teammates explore the myriad of Bright Angel’s rooms and caverns, they discover hollowed-out, plasticized bodies with no heads, preserved brains cut in-half, and dozens of crisp, burned bodies.  All computer hard drives have been smashed.  Eury intuits that the entire tunneled mountain is a computer and that ghostly visions and voices are part of its programs.  Did the staff and inmates go mad and kill each other?  One-by-one the team members are dying.  What will Eury and the other survivors find when they get to the Mind Altar at the heart of the mountain? Highly recommended.

Contains: Mild sexual situations, moderate gore.

 

Reviewed by Robert D. Yee

Posted on December 5, 2018 by , Reply

Book Review: Faction 9: A Novel of Revolution by James Firelocke

Faction 9: A Novel of Revolution by James Firelocke

James Firelocke, 2018

ISBN-13: 978-0999568293

Available: Paperback, Kindle edition.

 

 

On the surface, it seems like a great plot.  The future United States still operates under our current political system, but has been fully hijacked by evil capitalistic pig warmongers who have made serfs (or slaves) out of most of the population.  Small groups called ‘factions’ are fighting back behind the scenes, trying to take America back for the people, and stopping the enslavement of the population.  If the idea had stopped there and been better written, this could have been a good book.  However, Faction 9 makes for a lackluster reading experience.  The plot is part of the problem: it is cluttered with unneccessary and distracting ideas, such as alien metallic insects and humans with feline DNA. These add nothing to the basic premise, and strain the story’s credibility.It will appeal to a select crowd, but would have been better suited to a comic book or graphic novel format.

The use of elaborate language and cartoonish portrayals of the characters also detract from the story.  One notable example of the language problem is saying that a character ‘strained to achieve colonic climax’ when sitting on the toilet. Character development is minimal at best, and cartoonish in the case of the villains.  The author throws in every cliché when describing the money-loving evildoers.  Gold toilets, eating only steak and lobster, toilet paper with the Constitution printed on it, seeing every female as a sexual target, all people are their slaves, money is God…you get the idea.  You can’t even hate the villains in this: they are so laughable you don’t feel any emotion about them.  The protagonists aren’t much better. There is little backstory on how they became revolutionaries fighting for the people, and you wind up not caring what happens to them.

The author does have skill, but it only comes in flashes.  The time spent describing the foolishness of government hurdles when trying to do something as simple as changing a computer password was excellent, and his description of prisons in the future showed good imagination.  But, those moments were too few, and it’s not enough to save the story. While most readers won’t want to slog through this, the book could find a place among YA readers, or people looking for any story that involves despising conservatives, in terms of politics. It will appeal to a select crowd, but would have been better suited to a comic book or graphic novel format.

 

Contains: mild violence and profanity

Reviewed by Murray Samuelson

 

Posted on December 5, 2018 by , 2 comments
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