Home » Posts tagged "scary stories" (Page 4)

Defining the Scary Story

In explaining horror fiction for reader’s advisory librarians in The Reader’s Advisory Guide, Second Edition, Becky Siegel Spratford defined it as

…a story in which the author manipulates the reader’s emotions by introducing situations in which unexplainable phenomena and unearthly creatures threaten the protagonists and provoke terror in the reader.

We argued with her definition of horror fiction in our review, because here we consider genres such as human horror and killer animals as subgenres in horror fiction, as do many, many readers.

When I talk about scary stories for kids, I’m talking about something a little bit different, though, because what I consider “scary” doesn’t necessarily easily fall into genres (and sometimes it’s not especially scary, but has a focus on Halloween, or on creatures traditionally considered scary). I decided to ask my Monster Kid what he thought about all this.

Me: Does a scary story have to have a monster in it to be scary?

Monster Kid: No, a dripping, dark wood where you are lost is scary. That can be a scary story.

Me: So there doesn’t have to be a monster for the book to be a scary story?

Monster Kid: No, getting lost far away from your village in the dark is scary even without a monster. Even when there’s no monster, that’s a monster.

There you have it. You don’t need the unexplainable, otherworldly, or supernatural to make a scary story a scary story.

Here’s a list of the kinds of things that fall beneath the large umbrella of “scary stories” in children’s literature, according to several scholars in the subject:

Nursery rhymes
Fairy tales
Where the Wild Things Are and other picture books
A Series of Unfortunate Events
The Graveyard Book
A Tale Dark and Grimm
The Vampire Diaries
Twilight
The Hunger Games

Whether all of these REALLY qualify as scary stories (or horror, for that matter), or whether I should include Halloween books and not-so-scary monster tales in the “scary stories” category here, is certainly up for debate. But that dark and dripping wood that emerged from the mind of my six year old son… well, he certainly scared me with that, more than any monster could.

Posted on August 8, 2012 by Kirsten, 2 comments

Apocalypse Then?

Well, it looks like modern readers aren’t the only ones- the fine folks of the medieval era also enjoyed a good scary story, according to the British Library. And not just the aristocracy either. “Apocalypses” were written for a wider audience that those few people who could read Latin, which is pretty cool! And here is a gorgeous page from one of these richly illustrated books.

And now I’m off to read Mike Mullin’s Ashfall. Also an excellent book about the apocalypse, although not the same one.

Posted on December 8, 2011 by Kirsten, Reply

All Hallows’ Read- Join the Party!

Here’s a new tradition I can get behind- All Hallow’s Read, first proposed here by Neil Gaiman. What do you do to participate? Give someone a scary book this Halloween, or at least the week of Halloween. October 25 was the All Hallow’s Read Book Drop, a day to leave a scary book in a random location for the next person who sees it. Of course, you could do this any day, so don’t let the fact that the date has passed stop you. Even if you don’t feel like leaving a book for a random stranger, you can always send one to a friend, or a kid, assuming that you like them, pick something appropriate, and end up encouraging them to read more. Or you could even do a round robin. Hey, however you want to do it is great! Post below and tell me what book you gave or how you celebrated All Hallow’s Read, and I’ll randomly pick a winner for a signed copy of The Night Strangers by Chris Bohjalian, who I just met yesterday, and whose book, so far, is very cool. Give a book this Halloween, or in the words of Spook House Dave, share a scare!