Double Bingo! (2nd Row Down, Third Across- in Red… Blood Red… Mwahahaha)
OK, I loved these books in school, loooovvved them. I must have read all three 5 or six times each. So, for the Back to School Square I decided to give the first one a re-read when I found it in my local used book store.
This book gets four stars because it is a really good collection of American folk lore, shoot, it gets one whole star from me just for the Bibliography (plus I now have a whole new reading list. I love folklore). While the stories don’t necessarily give me the heeby jeebies the way they used to, they are still fun to read and the pen and ink illustrations by Stephen Gammell are still really eerie and unsettling. In fact, the pictures are often a lot scarier than the stories themselves.
I had forgotten the book is split into sections: Ahhhhh! (jump scares), He Heard Footsteps Coming Up the Cellar Stairs (ghost stories), They Eat Your Eyes They Eat Your Nose (All kinds of creatures), Other Dangers (modern urban legends), and Ahhhhh! (Pt. 2 Funny stories) I really liked the funny stories at the end. Some are old chestnuts (The Viper is coming… ) but even so I had a good chuckle.
This is very much a book geared towards 7-10 year olds. That’s great, though! It’s a bit of a weird in-between age that doesn’t have as many options as the slightly older Young Adults and it’s good to know these classics are still around. They are good stories and I thoroughly enjoyed reading them again. I am planning to pass this copy along to my nephew now that I’m done and I think he’ll enjoy it as well.
This is my Back to School Square on my Bingo Card