Home » Posts tagged "scary books for kids" (Page 8)

Frightening the Children? Worrisome Picture Books

I love reading with kids. And I especially love reading with my own kids. I admit I am guilty of reading Gordon Korman to my five year old.  There are just so many good books I want to share!

I’m not up to sharing EVERY book with them– at the ages of 5 and 7, I don’t think they’re quite ready for Goosebumps— but you’d be surprised  at some of what they gobble up. Well, maybe you wouldn’t be surprised. There are, as I said, so many good books, so many home runs! You might be surprised to find what children’s books some people think are too scary for kids to read, though (and also, what books some people consider to be children’s books. This article actually identifies The Call of the Wild as a children’s book). In this article, Jennifer Lewis chose nine books she considered to be “unintentionally terrifying.”  I can see only one, Robert Munsch’s Love You Forever, that I personally see as falling into that category. I’m not a child, though. While I haven’t read the book to my own children, they’ve had it read to them, and it hasn’t yet made them run screaming from the room. The Runaway Mummy by Michael Rex had the same creep factor for me, and I truly thought it would scare the heck out of my son, but he actually wanted to act it out with me!

The first book Lewis picked as “unintentionally terrifying”  was No, David! by David Shannon. Perhaps it’s hard to understand the charm of this book until you’ve seen the enthusiastic reaction of a classroom of energetic two and three year old boys. My son and his preschool class (almost all boys) knew this book by heart. Every single one of them completely related to David. Our copy is nearly worn out. The illustrations are similar to the ones David Shannon found in a book he had written and illustrated at nearly the same age, with the word NO on every page. Terrifying to parents, maybe… David is constantly getting into things he isn’t supposed to be getting in to… but scary to kids? Not at all.

Moving on, it’s hard to imagine how, with an entire world of children’s books to choose from, she picked Chicka Chicka Boom Boom! This is a favorite that never goes out of style. Preschoolers and kindergartners just learning the alphabet get into the jazzy rhythm and colorful illustrations, and even second and third graders aren’t “too cool”  to hear it and chant out the words– which by then, they know by heart. Alphabet mix-ups, drama, and trauma, are more funny than frightening– check out A is for Salad and AlphaOops! The Day Z Went First to see what I mean.

I have always loved Tomie de Paola. It’s true his books can evoke intense emotions– Nana Upstairs, Nana Downstairs brought me to tears, and The Clown of God is unforgettable. But it was Strega Nona that I chose as my birthday book for the school library when I was in third grade, not because it scared me, but because it’s funny and gentle in its telling, and it has a certain justice (something children appreciate). I suppose the endless pot of spaghetti might be disturbing if you’re trying to control your carbs, but the story of the apprentice who gets the food going and can’t stop it isn’t a new one– a recent version called The Golem’s Latkes (I bet you can guess what kind of food overflowed into the street in that book) recently made its way into my house. But the illustrations, and the way it’s told, make it a classic– and not one to be feared.

If these books are bothering you as an adult, it’s because you are looking at them as an adult. Children aren’t deconstructing these books. They’re getting a kick out of them. You do not have to wrap children  in cotton just because, in a book, the letters of the alphabet fell out of a tree and one of them skinned its knee.

So then we come to books that fit in a category that doesn’t quite meet the criterion that Lewis set of “unintentionally terrifying” books. Because these books are really intended to frighten and challenge children. She mentions Maurice Sendak’s Bumble-Ardy, for instance. This is the author of Outside Over There, in which a little girl’s baby sister is stolen away by goblins. While he’s no longer with us, he was no stranger to illustrating our fears. The surreal black and white illustrations of Chris Van Allsburg are magical, but not often comfortable. Jumanji is meant to unsettle readers, not reassure them. Neil Gaiman’s (and Dave McKean’s) The Wolves in the Walls is definitely intended to be a scary story. Children in these stories rise to the challenge set before them, but the journey can be a scary one.  These books are beloved by many children (particularly Jumanji and The Wolves in the Walls) although they definitely aren’t every child’s cup of tea. Knowing your kids is the best way to choose what will work for them, since even kids who are the same age can vary widely in reading interests and maturity. Naturally, use your best judgment. But I hope you won’t let your worries about what they can handle stop you from sharing great books with your kids.

Posted on April 21, 2013 by , Reply

Help a Reader Out: A Spine Chilling Series for Kids

Nicholas writes:

Hi. I’m trying to find a kids to pre-teen scary book series and having alot of difficulty.. It was a small box set with three or four books, each with three stories. I can’t remember exactly what they were called.. Spine Chillers or something like that I think. One story was about hedge animals that come to life.. Another was about a cursed newspaper route a kid gets from his brother.. Another was about a kid who wakes up to nobody knowing who he is except a mysterious Asian woman.. Any ideas? It was around the Goosebumps days. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

This seems like it should be an easy question to answer, but actually, it’s not. Publishers went bananas with the advent of Goosebumps. They all wanted to jump on that bandwagon! And all of those series lasted for more than three or four books. The series Nicholas remembers could be  Betsy Haynes’ Bone Chillers, M.T. Coffin’s Spinetinglers, or Fred E. Katz’s Spine Chillers. The only problem is that these series told only one story per book. The Midnight Library books by Damien Graves has three stories per volume, but the plots he describes don’t match up to the stories in the books. I shared the information I had with Nicholas, but I’d really like to know if this is a series, what series it is, and I’m sure Nicholas would love to know as well. If any of this sound familiar to you, post a comment, or email me at monsterlibrarian@monsterlibrarian.com

Posted on March 27, 2013 by , 2 comments

Crossover Readers

A lot of publicity has gone to the newly recognized audience of “crossover readers,” an audience that only really emerged into the mainstream with the success of Harry Potter. Crossover readers returning to (or discovering) YA fiction are now an audience to be reckoned with, and some publishers are even experimenting with marketing to an audience that might be outgrowing YA books and wants titles more reflective of those in-between years that exist now from the time at which you finish high school and the time you truly declare your independence.

It’s great that this crossover audience is getting some attention. But what’s interesting is that as we talk about adults crossing over to a genre aimed at teens, there is a group aged 10-14 (or, depending on who you talk to, 8-12) that most people refer to as “tweens” (which is a term I hate). And that group is crossing over to read not just YA fiction targeted at a teen audience of ages 15 and up, but adult novels. This isn’t new. YA fiction didn’t always exist, and the books that did weren’t necessarily the ones that rang the bells of these kids, who are maybe not quite ready to leave the children’s section completely (there are some extremely awesome books for middle grade readers)but are also ready to strike out for the books their parents have hidden in a box in the back of their closet. Today when we think of middle grade students and horror, Goosebumps is what usually comes to mind, but oh my gosh, do you have any idea how many kids between 8 and 12 have read Stephen King’s IT? I asked a group of women on Facebook what book had scared them the most as a kid, and one of them said IT, which she had read at age 8 (when asked if she would give it to her kids at that age, she gave me a resounding NO). Erin Morgenstern, on NPR’s Risky Reads, wrote about reading IT first at age 12 (link here). If you read through the comments, you’ll see how young kids often are when they start reading Stephen King. One commenter said “I went straight for Stephen King in fifth grade.” Another commenter started reading King at age 9. I myself remember reading IT when I was about 12… so, you see, those older readers in the children’s section of the library, are getting their books from everywhere. Morgenstern’s article appeared as part of a series by NPR called PG-13: Risky Reads, in which authors discuss the books that, as teens, changed their lives. Some of these are definitely YA, some would be considered adult fiction, but, in spite of the title of this series, many of these books were also read by kids much younger than 13.

This NPR series reminds me a lot of a book by Lizzie Skurnick, Shelf Discovery, that I read some time ago– it actually has covered some of the same books. Shelf Discovery was compiled from a column at Jezebel called Fine Lines (archives are at the bottom of the article), where she (and some others) write about fiction read by this same age group–middle graders and teens– mostly titles girls in that age group would have read as they grew up in the 60s, 70s, and 80s Crossing over directly from children’s books to adult fiction at that time really isn’t all that uncommon, and that may be why there are so many challenges to books for children and teens. It’s nice to pretend that each kind of reader stays sorted into their little box, and it’s true that some will take the path we expect, or direct them on, or that marketers try to push them on. But really, each reader is different, every kid is different, and there is no sudden revolution, just a world of books and assorted related media that lead in a multitude of ways to discovering who you are as a reader, and who you are in life.

Am I saying that as librarians, educators, and parents, we should be handing our eight year olds Stephen King? No, absolutely not. But many of you probably remember reading books like Flowers in the Attic and The Grounding of Group Six before you were fifteen, and it’s good to remember that kids aren’t getting their books just from the library, and to remember what it was like to be that age and read the books in that box under the bed, when you look at and think about your own young reader. And, as an elementary school librarian recently asked me (to paraphrase) “They’re beyond Goosebumps-, and ready for something more– what can I give them next?”

Posted on February 1, 2013 by , Reply
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