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The Not-Halloween Book List for Kids

It drives me bananas that my kids’ school doesn’t even recognize the existence of Halloween. Their preschools encouraged costumes, had Halloween parties, and even invited parents to a Halloween parade. The school I taught at, a public elementary school in a rural area (where you might think there would be objections) encouraged costumes, had Halloween parties, and held a costume parade. The day of Halloween, my cadet teacher showed up in a bloodstained cafeteria worker’s uniform with a dismembered arm in her pocket and a beatific smile on her face (which was the scariest part, really). But at the school my children now attend, there’s no such holiday. It’s sad, really. But I understand– public schools are under siege from all directions for the way holidays are celebrated (or not celebrated, for that matter). And there are lots of other schools in the same situation, as well as parents who are looking for slightly spooky but not too scary picture books for their little ones. So here are a few to try out.  Not all of them have been reviewed on the site, but you can click on the titles of the ones we’ve reviewed to find out a little more about them. Enjoy!

 

The Not-Halloween Book List for Kids from MonsterLibrarian.com

 

Pumpkin Circle: The Story of a Garden by George Levenson and Shmuel Thayer

This is a great book that traces the growth of a pumpkin’s life cycle. It’s got beautiful photographs and is a perfect complement to the trip to the pumpkin field that kids will probably make either with their class or their parents.

 

Bat Jamboree by Kathi Appelt and Melissa Sweet

Bats definitely have their place in the Halloween season, but it is possible to go batty without ever mentioning the holiday. Bat Jamboree is a very silly concept book that preschoolers and kindergarteners will love. There’s a second book as well, called Bats Around The Clock.

 

Red Leaf, Yellow Leaf by Lois Ehlert

Lois Ehlert’s wonderful illustrations and simple language are a perfect way to introduce the colors of the season.

 

Spooky Hayride by Brian James (Level 1 Scholastic Reader)

This is a wonderful easy reader that will satisfy any kid who has ever been tricked by their big brother. Or wanted to trick him.

 

Little Goblins Ten by Pamela Jane and Jane Manning

This is a fun counting book based on the rhyme “Over in the Meadow”.

 

Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak

Okay, this one can be scary for some kids, but others find it exhilirating, especially when they get to “roll their terrible eyes, and gnash their terrible teeth”.

 

A Beasty Story by Bill Martin, Jr. and Steven Kellogg

Perhaps you are familiar with the story that begins “There was a dark, dark, wood…” Imagine that made into a cartoony concept book that reinforces kids’ knowledge of colors, and you have one of my favorite kindergarten reads. You can’t go wrong with an author/illustration combination like Bill Martin, Jr. and Steven Kellogg!

 

Skeleton Hiccups by Margery Cuyler and S.D. Schindler

Skeleton has the hiccups, and desperately wants a cure. It doesn’t get much sillier than watching a skeleton attempt to drink a glass of water in an attempt to get rid of them.

 

The Gobble-uns’ll Git You Ef You Don’t Watch Out! James Whitcomb Riley’s “Little Orphant Annie” by James Whitcomb Riley and Joel Schick

Sadly, this book has been out of print for years and years, and it’s doubtful that it ever will be reprinted. But you just can’t have October here without mentioning the great Hoosier poet James Whitcomb Riley. Even if you can’t get your hands on this wonderfully illustrated book, with its menacing cartoon gobble-uns, find yourself a copy of “Little Orphant Annie” to share with your kids. It’s a fantastic read-aloud. I loved Riley when I was a kid– what an amazing imagination the man had!

Posted on September 16, 2012 by , Reply

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 , 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 , Reply
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