LS 5603 Traditional Literature - More Scary Stories

Bibliographic Data:
Schwartz. Alvin. More Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark. 1984. Ill. by Stephen Grammell. New York: Harper & Row, Publishers. ISBN 0397320817

Plot Summary:
This is a collection of short, some only a page long, folk stories for children ages nine and up. More Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark is the sequel to Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark. The third book in the series is titled Scary Stories 3 More Tales to Chill Your Bones.

Critical Analysis:
According to the American Library Association website (www.ala.org), Alvin Swartz was the most challenged author from 1990 to 2004. This is probably due to the Scary Stories series being number one on the most challenged books list of 1990 to 2000. The books are in good company since Of Mice and Men, Harry Potter, and Bridge to Terabithia are also in the top ten.

When I saw this I found myself asking "Why?" Why is a series of books that I remember my entire fourth grade class adoring at the top of a list of challenged books? As I recall we loved to sing "O'Leary is dead, and O'Riley don't know it... and neither one knows that the other one's dead. BA-ROOOM! BA-ROOOM!" I guess there are a lot of adults that do not find it as amusing and entertaining as nine-year-olds do.

More Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark is a wonderful collection of one to four page scary folk stories collected, researched, and retold by Alvin Swartz. The vast majority of the stories are not horribly scary and as I recall most were not that scary when I was nine either. I actually find the illustrations much worse than the stories themselves. I barely glanced at the illustration to the story The Bride and hopefully will remember not to look at it again. (It reminds me of a scene in The Ring.) If anything, the Scary Stories books have truly creepy illustrations with mildly scary stories.

I found some of the stories, such as The Voice and The Church, to be too short and lacking in enough detail to make them interesting. It was a let down to complete a page and realize the story was already finished. Other stories like The Drum, Somebody Fell from Aloft, and One Sunday Morning were much more satisfying to read.

Some familiar and common tales that are used in television and movies are included in this collection. Wonderful Sausage, a story of a butcher using human meat, has been retold in many ways over the years. (I recall a Tales from the Crypt show using a similar story, as well as The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.) And A Ghost in the Mirror was similar to a story used recently on the show Supernatural. (On a side note, I still freak out if I see a mirror in the dark from reading this story when I was young.)

I greatly enjoyed the Notes and Sources sections at the end of the book. Schwartz researched multiple versions of each story and compiled a good anthology that interests children, and the background behind certain stories even made them more interesting. For example, Rings on Her Fingers tells of a woman buried alive and awakened by a grave robber attempting to cut off her fingers to steal rings. In this story the grave robber falls on his knife in the grave, a sort of revenge for stealing, but the origins of the story are based in a reality prior to embalming.

Overall More Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark and the rest of the series are good entertainment for kids that are able to handle the stories and illustrations without having nightmares. And even if a few nightmares, or irrational fears of mirrors, occur the reading and understanding of these traditional folktales can be beneficial as a part of our culture.

Review Excerpts:
The Horn Book: "Brief, blood curdling tales of ghosts, murders, graveyards, and other horrors, greatly enhanced by the ghoulish illustrations."

School Library Journal: "Guaranteed to make your teeth chatter and your spine tingle."

Connections:

ALA's Banned Books Week Information Page
http://www.ala.org/ala/oif/bannedbooksweek/bbwlinks/Default3879.htm

The Top 10 Challenged Authors 1990 to 2004 and Most Challenged Books Lists can be found through the above link. There are also activities to use in classrooms and in your own life involving banned and challenged books.

Scary Stories to Tell in The Dark, Scary Stories 3 More Tales to Chill Your Bones, and In a Dark, Dark Room and Other Scary Stories are also by Alvin Schwartz.