{"id":6868,"date":"2019-09-27T23:28:58","date_gmt":"2019-09-28T03:28:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/?p=6868"},"modified":"2019-09-27T23:28:58","modified_gmt":"2019-09-28T03:28:58","slug":"book-review-the-scary-stories-treasury-three-books-to-chill-your-bones-by-alvin-schwartz-illustrated-by-stephen-gammell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/book-review-the-scary-stories-treasury-three-books-to-chill-your-bones-by-alvin-schwartz-illustrated-by-stephen-gammell\/","title":{"rendered":"Book Review: The Scary Stories Treasury: Three Books to Chill Your Bones by Alvin Schwartz, illustrated by Stephen Gammell"},"content":{"rendered":"

In honor of Banned Books Week, a review of Alvin Schwartz’s The Scary Stories Treasury<\/em>, which had a place on the American Library Association’s Top 10 Banned and Challenged Books list from 2000-2009. This review was written about the hardcover edition of the original compilation, with illustrations by Stephen Gammell: it doesn’t appear to be available in hardcover at this time.<\/p>\n

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Scary Stories Treasury;\u00a0Three Books to Chill Your Bones<\/em>\u00a0by Alvin Schwartz, illustrated by Stephen Gammell<\/p>\n

HarperCollins Publishers, 2013<\/p>\n

ISBN-13: 978-0060263416<\/p>\n

Available: New and Used paperback<\/p>\n

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The Scary Stories Treasury<\/i>\u00a0contains three popular volumes of \u201cscary stories\u201d, collected from folklore and urban legends by Alvin Schwartz:\u00a0Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, More Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark,<\/i>\u00a0and\u00a0Scary Stories 3: More Tales to Chill Your Bones<\/i>. Any librarian who isn\u2019t familiar with the books collected in this volume really needs to check them out. Not only are these titles in high demand for older children and teens, but they are an incredible storytelling resource. In fact, in the introduction to\u00a0Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark<\/i>, Schwartz writes that scary stories are \u201cmeant to be told\u201d.<\/p>\n

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Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark<\/i>\u00a0is the best known of the three books, and is the one I\u2019ve used the most. It both starts and ends with \u201cjump\u201d stories, and these are fun to tell to a group. \u201cThe Viper\u201d and \u201cThe Ghost with Bloody Fingers\u201d are stories I\u2019ve frequently told. Also included are the poem \u201cA Man Who Lived in Leeds\u201d, the song \u201cOld Woman All Skin and Bone\u201d, \u201cThe Hearse Song\u201d and the Halloween game \u201cThe Dead Man\u2019s Brains\u201d. Other stories in the book include variants on familiar tales, such as \u201cThe Guests\u201d, in which a young couple looking for a place to stay the night learn after the fact that their hosts were ghosts, and urban legends like \u201cThe Hook\u201d, in which news that a murderer with a hook for a hand is on the loose spoils a date. Finally, there are some truly creepy and scary tales about ghosts, witches, shapeshifters, and the supernatural. While most of these come from folklore, and can\u2019t be mistaken for anything happening today, they can still give readers, and listeners, the shivers.<\/p>\n

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More Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark\u00a0<\/i>has longer stories. Some are set in a specific historical period, such as \u201cThe Weird Blue Light\u201d, which takes place during the Civil War. Many of them have sudden endings. In \u201cSomething Was Wrong\u201d, we follow a bewildered and frightened John Sullivan around, learning only in the last few words that he is dead. Some folktales have clearly been adapted for a modern audience, such as \u201cThe Drum\u201d an ominous contemporary variant of the folktale \u201cThe New Mother\u201d. Schwartz doesn\u2019t hold back or moralize when he retells a story. \u201cWonderful Sausage\u201d is a clever and horrifying tale about a butcher who adds a special ingredient to his sausage. This volume also has a few more contemporary tales, ranging from frightening to tragic, and a description of the creepy sleepover game \u201cA Ghost in the Mirror\u201d. While the stories in this volume are more satisfying in many ways, I\u2019d say these tales are aimed at a slightly older audience.<\/p>\n

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Scary Stories 3\u00a0<\/i>continues with more detailed and sometimes complicated stories. In \u201cJust Delicious\u201d, a twist on the folktale \u201cThe Golden Arm\u201d, a terrified wife feeds her husband a dead woman\u2019s liver without his knowledge… and the woman wants it back. \u201cHarold\u201d is a chilling story of a vengeful doll. \u201cThe Wolf Girl\u201d, set in a specific time and place, has its basis in the lives of real people, as does \u201cThe Trouble\u201d, a story about poltergeist activity in the Lombardo household. \u201cMaybe You Will Remember\u201d, a baffling story about a girl whose sick mother disappears from her hotel, becomes truly horrifying when the reader turns to the notes at the back of the book to solve the puzzle. The volume wraps up with a couple of mildly funny stories. Of the three books, I\u2019d say this is my least favorite, possibly because it is so grounded in detail, as details often distract listeners, making it harder to get them engaged in the story.<\/p>\n

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All three books have detailed notes and bibliographies provided by the author. While you don\u2019t have to read the notes to enjoy the stories (with the exception of \u201cMaybe You Will Remember\u201d) they are easy to understand and interesting. All three books also have incredible illustrations by gifted children\u2019s book illustrator Stephen Gammell, done in just black and white ink. It\u2019s his illustrations that make the books so magnetic to kids… and so terrifying. The illustration for \u201cWonderful Sausage\u201d, as an example, \u00a0brings a whole new grotesque dimension to the story. With just a few strokes and some shading, Gammell ups the scare level considerably. Tormented, skeletal faces, ragged clothes, distorted and indistinct figures, glowing eyes and teeth, empty chairs, empty baskets, empty clothes… it\u2019s enough to cause nightmares, and makes much more impact than if we had only Schwartz\u2019s words. Many collections of scary stories from American folklore don\u2019t include illustrations, or at least not effective ones, and that is probably one of the reasons why more of them aren\u2019t well known. The\u00a0Scary Stories\u00a0<\/i>books, however, are notorious, to the point that the series was seventh on the American Library Association\u2019s list of the most frequently challenged books for 2000-2009, and the illustrations are surely a good part of the reason why these books in particular are noticed.<\/p>\n

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The main benefit of owning\u00a0The Scary Stories Treasury\u00a0<\/i>is that you\u2019ll have all three books in one volume. Each book appears to have been faithfully reproduced, with Gammell\u2019s original illustrations. However, there\u2019s no new or additional material here. Readers who don\u2019t have the books and want them might want to consider this volume, but for those who already own them, there\u2019s no reason to purchase it. I highly recommend that libraries of all kinds have at least one copy of each of the books included in\u00a0The Scary Stories Treasury<\/i>, and the\u00a0Treasury\u00a0<\/i>itself might make a nice reference volume, and you\u2019ll find that the\u00a0Scary Stories\u00a0<\/i>books are rarely on the shelves.\u00a0The Scary Stories Treasury i<\/i>s highly recommended to libraries and readers who do not already own copies of the\u00a0Scary Stories\u00a0<\/i>books, and recommended as a reference volume for school and public libraries. Appropriate, based on maturity of the reader, for grades 4 and up.<\/p>\n

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Contains: Violence, gore, cannibalism, deception, the occult, witchcraft, murder.<\/p>\n

Review by Kirsten Kowalewski<\/p>\n

\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In honor of Banned Books Week, a review of Alvin Schwartz’s The Scary Stories Treasury, which had a place on the American Library Association’s Top 10 Banned and Challenged Books list from 2000-2009. This review was written about the hardcover edition of the original compilation, with illustrations by Stephen Gammell: it doesn’t appear to be<\/p>\n

Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1244,513,2474,2230,34,2219,2208,799,1245,1780,207,1779,4031],"class_list":["post-6868","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-alvin-schwartz","tag-banned-books-week","tag-book-review","tag-campfire-stories","tag-childrens-books","tag-folklore","tag-read-alouds","tag-scary-stories-for-kids","tag-scary-stories-to-tell-in-the-dark","tag-stephen-gammell","tag-storytelling","tag-the-scary-stories-treasury","tag-urban-legends"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6868","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6868"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6868\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6872,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6868\/revisions\/6872"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6868"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6868"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6868"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}