These stories serve in part to teach kids about themselves and the world around them. But, as with most horror, there is more going on here than the surface scares would have us believe. There is a scarecrow that comes to life, a spider laying eggs in a young girl’s face, and a man who follows a young woman all the way home while flashing his brights at her. And there is violence, and death, and graphic imagery in almost all the stories in the collection. A children’s story collection written at a fifth-grade reading level, banned and challenged by parents everywhere for everything from the graphic illustrations to the light way the stories dealt with death, to the violence the stories contained (But really, have you ever really listened to a nursery rhyme?).
Scary stories to tell in the dark pdf series#
They were the #1 banned book series of the ’90s, and in the top 10 banned books of the 2000s. The Scary Stories books are some of the most banned and challenged I’ve ever come across. Even more than that, though, parents hated them. In any case, one thing was clear: kids loved them. Maybe kids sought them out as as an outlet for fear maybe as an outlet for curiosity. They seem to have operated in a similar way.
I think about these studies a lot, and I find myself thinking of it now in relation to these books. There is evidence to suggest people with anxiety consume large amounts of horror media because it allows them a controlled space to work out their fears. The little girl who cowered away from as many scary things as possible grew into someone who learned to see the feeling behind the scary thing, to find humanity in the monstrous and the monstrous in humanity. The experience and the feeling of that night has stuck with me for years. Here was a book (and an author, and a narrator) so good at telling stories I didn’t need the illustrations for them to be effective. I have always loved stories and always knew I wanted to be a storyteller.
I was afraid to go to sleep, but fascinated. Back then I wanted nothing more than for my uncle to stop telling the stories-except for him to keep going. The illustrations have a lasting power to chill, yes, but the writing makes me chuckle. Looking back now, almost none of Alvin Schwartz’s are as horrifying as I remember. I also remember being absolutely terrified out of my mind. I only remember camping out in the living room with my brother and my uncle, lights off, listening as my uncle read to us. I don’t remember how old I was the first time I came across Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark. What does it mean? What does it make you think? What does it make you feel? Tell Me a Story To this day, one of the fundamental building blocks of my relationships to my family and the world is discussion about the art we consume. But I always knew-could feel-that even if I was a ten-year-old reading Tolstoy or something, it wouldn’t be a big deal. All pretty standard age-group fare as far as I could tell. I collected Nancy Drew, and sought out as many fairy tale retellings as I could find. I have distinct memories of working my way through my school library’s entire Agatha Christie collection. I mostly liked mysteries and fairy tales. This isn’t to say my interests as a child were transgressive, exactly. I would ask questions about words or things in the story that didn’t make sense, but I was never shamed or punished for my interests. When I was a kid, I was allowed to read pretty much anything I wanted.
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