The Oxford Book of Scary Tales

Rating:
Summary: An October's worth of diverse, literate and chilling stories
Review: There is nothing like a scary story to make me appreciate my save, warm home, and this book is filled with such stories. The Oxford Book of Scary Tales has all kinds of chilling stories written in a wide variety of styles. It begins with a poem entitled "This is the key to the castle" by Dave Calder, which like "The House that Jack Built" adds one new clause each stanza building a repetitive rhyme children will love. My favorite is:

"where the black rat runs with yellow teeth
sharp as sorrow and long as grief"

The editors include more narrative poems, a cartoon that reminds me of Edward Gorey, a story written as a series of letters that tell of a real camp horror, and a story purporting to be an interview with a novelist who explains why she writes horror stories. The book includes a grave-digging story one's grandpa might tell if he had a particularly keen sense of humor and irony, and there are enough traditional tales of horror and terror for any of us, all toned down to a kid's level. The collection even includes several friendly ghosts.

The language of the stories is also marvelous, filled with picturesque similes and not a cliché in sight. Consider these snippets:

"He's got about as much idea of sailing as a camel up an apple tree with its eyes shut." (From "Dear Jane" by Shelia Lavelle)

"... a smile like stretched elastic." (From "A Change of Aunts" by Vivian Alcock)

"They dodge ... the long snakes of reclaimed trolleys, their guides at the rear slumped like galley slaves." And "The aisle is crowded. Trolleys lie in all directions like ships of a scuttled fleet. But his mother negotiates them and the people clinging to them like a confident pilot...." (From "Supermarket" by Dennis Hamley. btw, "trolleys" is brit speak for "shopping carts.")

The illustrations are almost as varied as the styles of the stories and were a bit distracting until I became absorbed in the stories. I just thought of the experience like reading short stories form one children's magazine after another or like reading from a stack of picture books. All different stories, all different illustrators.

With over thirty short stories, The Oxford Book of Scary Tales gives an October's worth of reading and will take a reader all the way to Halloween. I bought this book for my daughter years ago because I was so fond of another collection of scary tales written for adults and entitled The Oxford Book of English Ghost Stories. That book is edited by Michael Cox and R. A. Gilbert. Older children may want to progress to that collection for next October's reading.

Linda Murphy
...