Sunday, October 21, 2007

Scary Stories by Alvin Schwartz


I read all three books in the Scary Stories series by Schwartz. The titles are Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, More Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, and Scary Stories 3 More Tales to Chill Your Bones. These are young adult books. They are collections of urban legends that many of you might be familiar with. Some are supposed to be scary but others are supposed to be funny.
The first book - I didn't like the beginning and it was almost enough to make me quite reading and not read the other two. However, once I got past the first section the book really picked up. I didn't find any of the stories scary - but then I'm also much older than the audience these books were written for. I did find them fun because some I remember telling or being told when I was younger. Remember the one about the couple who are on a deserted road and they hear a news broadcast that a man with a hook escaped from a nearby prison? Then when they get home they find the hook attached to the car? That is one of the stories in the books.

This was the selection for my Banned Book club. These books have been banned/challenged. However I have no idea why. I think I might do a search on Monday and see if I can find out. Some of the pictures were a little gruesome, but couldn't think of anything in the stories that would keep me from letting a child read these.

new author/3 books read/ fiction/ 292 pgs total

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

hi my class and i are doing banned book week so i just wanted to know how come this book was banned and how did u fell

Unknown said...

I'm not sure why it was banned, I think I read somewhere it was because some kids got scared.

I found the book on the list of 100 most challenged/banned books on the website www.ala.org

Anonymous said...

I'm sure no one will see this, but I remember reading that the main reason it was challenged was because of the illustrations. Parents thought the drawings were too frightening for the intended age group. But, I could be wrong.

Anonymous said...

my friend's 10 year old came back from school with this book.

Anonymous said...

I still have my copies of these books! I was scared of a few of the illustrations when I was little, but my family said that they were funny. I am surprised that this was banned.