Short and Shivery: Thirty Chilling Tales
Grade 4 Up A collection of spooky stories, competently adapted and retold (sometimes quite freely) from world folklore, including Japan, Africa, and Latin America, as well as Europe and the U.S. Fairy tales are represented, from Grimm's The Robber Bridegroom to the modern urban folktale Lavender, a reworking of the phantom hitchhiker story. Some tales are familiar, appearing in one form or another in various collections, e.g., Tailypo, but many are not. Stories have also been adapted from the work of Nathaniel Hawthorne, John Bunyan, and Washington Irving. The stories drawn from collections of regional American folklore are not only the freshest, but often the scariest. Sources are fully documented at the back of the book. The cover has just the right touch of gruesomeness to attract readers, with bats, rats, weird faces, and a skeleton arm escaping from the grave. Almost every story is illustrated with a full-page picture in pen-and-ink and wash. These are well crafted but, with some notable exceptions, don't always capture the true terror of the tales, and don't enhance the text in a spine-tingling manner. Many of the stories will be effective as read-alouds. There are some delicious shivers here, with plenty of fodder for an active imagination, as well as excitement. Annette Curtis Klause, Montgomery County Department of Public Libraries, Md.Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.