Creepy Classics : (Anthology) (Kidbacks)

Rating:
Summary: A pretty good kids' collection
Review: _Creepy_Classics_ consists of seven short stories, two poems (by Robert Service and Edgar Allan Poe), an excerpt from _Frankenstein_, and an excerpt from Shakespeare's Scottish tragedy - a formidable selection. Some of the works - 'The Monkey's Paw', 'The Dead Girl' (which I have seen elsewhere under the title 'Was it a Dream?'), 'Lost Hearts', 'Dracula's Guest' (which I believe, though I am not certain, is abridged), and 'The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar' are fairly frequently anthologised, though this is not a problem in a collection for children, who will be encountering most of the works for the first time.

I read this book a couple of times when I was eleven or twelve, and again quite recently, and was impressed with the many features peculiarly helpful to the young reader. The text size is a little larger than usually found in adult or young adult books, but not large enough to be embarrassing; the glossary is nearly comprehensive; the general introduction ('Dear Reader') and the brief biographical sketches are both of high quality. However, the most appealing part of the book (apart, of course, from the stories themselves!) is certainly the pencil drawings by Dominick R. Domingo. There is one for each work; though serious and comic, realistic and grotesque, by turns, they are uniformly good, and contribute greatly to the effect of the individual stories.