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.
Becky
August 8, 2012 at 2:02 pm
You are absolutely correct that my definition of horror is very narrow. In fact, I had a much broader definition in the first edition and the first drafts of this edition, but my editors wanted me to make it as specific as possible.
They also needed me to clearly delineate the genre from others in the ALA series (like paranormal and crime). They wanted me to make a narrow stand and that is what I did.
Writing that one sentence definition took me a few weeks. It was not easy. I do go on to talk about all of the other types of scary books that may appeal to horror readers but do not fit my definition.
I totally agree with you that what makes something a scary book is personal and broader. I would never assume that “horror” as I define it is the only type of book that is scary.
Scary is a personal designation, and as a readers’ advisor, I will find a patron a scary book that is right for him or her (and fits their scary parameters) no matter if it fits my definition of horror or not.
I hope this spurs more discussion. Thanks for posting it.
Kirsten
August 8, 2012 at 4:51 pm
I know that you have to set limits when defining a genre for the purposes of reader’s advisory, especially for reader’s advisory librarians who may be completely unfamiliar with it. Heck, even we have to decide how far we are willing to stretch the boundaries here. I’ve written about Patricia Mathews’ book too, although I haven’t formally reviewed it. I think both her book and yours are great tools for helping librarians work with hard-to-define genres.
As a children’s librarian and school librarian, I think there is a different challenge when working with children’s books, which is that most children’s books don’t self-identify as horror and many librarians who work with children prefer to pass over the ones that do. The Goosebumps books are probably the best example of this- even their original covers scream “I am pulpy juvenile horror”! Some school librarians won’t even purchase them for their libraries (the case could easily be made that there are other books that better support the curriculum). Then, since most children’s books don’t self-identify as horror, as a school librarian when I am asked “Where are the scary stories”? it means something a little different than an adult asking for a horror novel. I have to ask myself (and them) questions like these:
And so on. Rather than narrowly defining it, I end up looking everywhere.
Your definition and your book provided us with a lot of food for thought and inspired some interesting discussions. That’s why I decided to ask the Monster Kid his opinion of scary stories (he’s six, he likes Godzilla, cryptids, Halloween, Scooby-Doo, monster movies, and making up his own scary monster stories). I was interested to find out if he agreed with your definition of horror fiction for scary stories (a designation that here generally indicates books for kids), and I thought what he said was pretty neat. By the way, not too long after he created the dark and dripping forest, it was populated with a bizarre, livestock and man-eating monster called the Haranabear… so either way apparently works for him.
Thanks for your comments!