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Back To School: A Book List for Grades 4-8

I know that in some places school doesn’t start until after Labor Day, but in Indiana, most schools are already in session, and the rest will be by sometime next week.

For kids, the end of summer vacation can be kind of a bummer, but for kids who love scary stories, there are lots of them set in schools. School isn’t a boring place there; it’s an adventure. A terrifying adventure, yes, but terrifying in a different way than the usual school fears and anxieties. Of course, after some of these school stories, it’s possible that young readers may see their neighborhood school in a more favorable light.  Here are a few suggestions for the tween crowd looking for a book for when it’s time for Drop Everything And Read.

 

Scary School series by Derek the Ghost (Derek Taylor Kent)

According to Rhonda Wilson, who reviewed the first two books for us (we’re waiting on the third) this is a fantastic series. You can visit the Scary School website here

#1 Scary School (reviewed here)

#2 Monsters on the March (reviewed here)

#3 The Northern Frights

 

Tales from Lovecraft Middle School series by Charles Gilman

This new series for tweens provides a gentle introduction to the world of Lovecraft.  H.P. Lovecraft scared the daylights out of me in high school, so double check to make sure you are not handing his original stories over, but this series has cool lenticular cover art, is delightfully creepy, and also has an awesome school librarian in it.

#1 Professor Gargoyle (reviewed here).

#2 Teacher’s Pest (I’m reading this now, and if you are creeped out by bugs, this will give you the willies).

#3 The Slither Sisters

#4 Substitute Creature

 

Bone Chillers series by Betsy Haynes and others

This out-of-print series, starring the students of Edgar Allan Poe High School, was published between 1994 and 1997, at the peak of the Goosebumps craze. It was good enough to inspire its own television show. You can probably find it used, if your library doesn’t still have it. As I mentioned in a previous post, though, libraries tend to hang on to books until a really ruthless weeder comes along, or the book is completely worn out. I know Bone Chillers was published in a hardcover library edition (probably a prebound version) because I had a few on the shelves when I was a school librarian.S

#1 Beware the Shopping Mall by Betsy Haynes
#2 Little Pet Shop of Horrors by Betsy Haynes

#3 Back to School by Betsy Haynes
#4 Frankenturkey by Betsy Haynes
#5 Strange Brew by Betsy Haynes
#6 Teacher Creature by Betsy Haynes
#7 Frankenturkey II by Betsy Haynes
#8 Welcome to Alien Inn by Betsy Haynes
#9 Attack of the Killer Ants by Betsy Haynes
#10 Slime Time by Betsy Haynes
#11 Toilet Terror by Betsy Haynes
#12 Night of the Living Clay by David Bergantino
#13 The Thing Under the Bed by Daniel Ehrenhaft
#14  A Terminal Case of the Uglies by David Bergantino
#15 Tiki Doll of Doom by Michael Burgan
#16 The Queen of the Gargoyles by Gene Hult
#17 Why I Quit the Baby-Sitters Club by Betsy Haynes
#18 Blowtorch@Psycho.Com by Sherry Shahan
#19 The Night Squawker by Dahlia Kosinski
#20 Scare Bear by Gene Hult
#21 The Dog Ate My Homework by Betsy Haynes
#22 Killer Clown of Kings County by Daniel Ehrenhaft
#23 Romeo and Ghouliette by Ryan Chipman

School of Fear series by Gitty Daneshveri

Four middle-school aged kids with severe phobias are sent to an exclusive and isolated school that promises to help them get past their fears. I have seen adult reviewers who have taken this premise quite seriously and have been very upset by its content. To be clear, these books are not intended as a mockery of the truly phobic, nor are they inspiring tales of therapeutic success– rather, they are a creepy, quirky, and sometimes funny, take on the “boarding school for last-chance students” story.

#1 School of Fear

#2 Class Is Not Dismissed!

#3 The Final Exam

 

Down a  Dark Hall by Lois Duncan (reviewed here)

Speaking of boarding schools, it’s hard to get creepier than with this tale of an exclusive school for the “gifted”, in a creepy old house in an isolated location and no way to contact anyone in the outside world, inhabited by artistically talented ghosts who possess the students to exercise their creative genius.

 

Splurch Academy for Disruptive Boys series by Julie Gardner Berry and Sally Gardner

Yet another “boarding school for last-chance students” story, this time heavily illustrated and leaning on the gross-out factor.  In this series, the hard cases that public schools haven’t been able to reach are entrusted to the care of a fascinating group of educators, all of whom are monsters.

#1 The Rat Brain Fiasco (reviewed here)

#2 Curse of the Bizarro Beetle (reviewed here)

#3 The Colossal Fossil Freakout

#4 The Trouble With Squids

 

Ivy and Bean and the Ghost That Had to Go by Annie Barrows

This title in the Ivy and Bean series is mind-bending. Ivy and Bean are best friends, on totally opposite ends of the personality spectrum. Ivy is shy and imaginative, while Bean is always ready for action. In this book, Ivy claims to have seen a ghost in the girls’ bathroom at school. Bean enthusiastically helps her spread the story until the two of them manage to terrify their entire class out of using the bathroom. Naturally, an exorcism is in order. Middle schoolers will find it too young, but fourth graders can still enjoy it.

The Dreadful Future of Blossom Culp by Richard Peck

This is not my favorite of the Blossom Culp books (that would be Ghosts I Have Been) but it’s a great school story, in a totally dated kind of way. In it, Blossom, who is psychic, and who has been convinced to do fortunetelling in her school’s haunted house, time travels to the future. Well, her future. Her future would be in the present time, which in this case was the time that the book was written. In the 1980’s. And she goes to school with the kid who has promised to help her get back home. The entire thing is a blast from the past now, but it’s still fun.

Bunnicula Meets Edgar Allan Crow by James Howe

Bunnicula, the vampire rabbit who is a threat to vegetables everywhere, has really evolved, developing spinoff series, easy readers, and much more. Bunnicula Meets Edgar Allan Crow returns us to the world of Chester, Howie, Harold, and the Monroe family. In this book, the Monroes are playing host to M.T. Graves, the author of the FleshCrawlers series, who is there for a school visit. Graves brings along his pet, a strange, silent bird named Edgar Allan Crow. As usual, mystery, suspense, and humor combine to create another excellent Bunnicula story.

Matilda by Roald Dahl

Maybe you don’t think of Matilda as a scary book . But although it’s sometimes hard to remember how scary Roald Dahl actually is, he touches on some very dark themes and very extreme plotlines in his books. It’s an understatement to say that Miss Trunchbull, the principal of Matilda’s school, is memorable, in the worst way possible.

 

Infestation by Tim Bradley

And now, one last “boarding school for last-chance students” story, which is also an homage to monster movies.  Imagine Louis Sachar’s Holes, but with an insect invasion.

 

As always, look these books over to make sure they’re right for you (or your child) since they’re all over the spectrum. Some of them are good for nine year olds, and a little young for middle schoolers: others will be more appropriate for kids on the upper end of the age range. Good luck getting back into the school routine, and may your own school be refreshingly free of insects, ghosts, monsters, and ominous black birds.

 

 

 

Posted on August 8, 2013 by , Reply

Summer Reading Is Killing Me! Part 2: Tween and Middle School Reads

It turns out I actually don’t have to do much work to provide you with a good list of scary books for summer reading. Andrea Lipinski has done most of the work for me in the New York Public Library’s blog with a post titled Dark, Creepy, Spooky, Scary Crossover Books.

We’ve actually reviewed a bunch of these here, although I’m not sure we completely agree with her age recommendations. You might check out our reviews to see what we thought. There are some great books on the list, though!

Reviewed here:

Eighth Grade Bites: The Chronicles of Vladimir Tod (first in a series)

Anya’s Ghost by Vera Brogsol (this was a Stoker nominee last year in the YA category)

A Tale Dark and Grimm by Adam Gidwitz

Tales from Lovecraft Middle School: Professor Gargoyle by Charles Gilman (first in a series)

Coraline by Neil Gaiman

The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman (a Newbery Award winner)

Rot & Ruin by Jonathan Maberry (a Stoker Award winner in the YA category last year, and first in a series– followed by Dust & Decay)

A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness (a Stoker nominee last year)

Three Quarters Dead by Richard Peck

Zom-B by Darren Shan (first in a series that will eventually comprise thirteen books)

Strange Angels by Lili St. Crow (first in a series)

 

Here are some additional suggestions from our own Middle School List. With a very few exceptions, we’ve reviewed nearly all of these:

 

Zombies

Generation Dead by Daniel Waters

Generation Dead: Kiss of Life by Daniel Waters

Rot and Ruin by Jonathan Maberry

The Dead by Charlie Higson

The Enemy by Charlie Higson

Zombie Queen of Newbery High by Amanda Ashby

You Are So Undead to Me by Stacey Jay

Zombie Blondes by Brian James

 

Supernatural Horror

The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin

The Egypt Game by Zilpha Keately Snyder

The Near Witch by Victoria Schwab

Cryer’s Cross by Lisa McMann

The Seer of Shadows by Avi

The Other Side of Dark by Sarah Smith

Blackbriar, Fingers and others by William Sleator

Stranger With My Face, I Know What You Did Last Summer, and others by Lois Duncan

Ghosts I Have Been, Thirteen Past Dead, and others by Richard Peck

Monster’s Proof by Richard Lewis

Skeleton Man and others by Joseph Bruchac

Demonglass by Rachel Hawkins

Bad Girls Don’t Die by Katie Alender

From Bad to Cursed by Katie Alender

Mercy by Rebecca Lim

 

Vampires

Sucks to be Me: The all-true confessions of Mina Hamilton, Vampire (maybe) by Kimberly Pauley

Still Sucks to be Me: The all-true confessions of Mina Smith, Teen Vampire by Kimberly Pauley

Parliament of Blood by Justin Richards

Blood Ninja by Nick Lake

Look for Me by Moonlight by Mary Downing Hahn

The Silver Kiss by Annette Curtis Klause

Vampire Loves by Joann Sfar (graphic novel)

 

Werewolves

Blood and Chocolate by Annette Curtis Klause

Wereworld by Curtis Jobling

Under My Skin by Judith Graves

 

Anthologies

Bloody Horowitz by Anthony Horowitz (collection)

Fear by R.L.  Stine

 

 

Posted on May 9, 2013 by , Reply

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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