We’re halfway into October, the month of pumpkin spice and giant Home Depot skeletons, so today’s stack is spooky books for (mostly) kids! (Look, I do have some spooky books for older readers in my stacks, but I’ll be honest: I’m not much of a horror fan myself, so I tend to be a little more sparing with those.)
The Spiderwick Chronicles by Tony DiTerlizzi and Holly Black
I’m very late to the party here—The Spiderwick Chronicles celebrated its 20th anniversary last year (and the last book in the series was published 15 years ago). Even the movie is a teenager now, and a new TV series based on the books appeared this year. I don’t have any good excuses other than, well, there are a lot of books out there. (And in here, in my office, mostly piled on the floor.)
But just in case you, like me, aren’t already familiar with the tale, here’s where it begins: a trio of siblings (older sister Mallory and twins Jared and Simon) have just moved with their mom into the Spiderwick Estate, a shambling old mansion that belongs to a distant relative. When they hear scrambling and scurrying in the walls, Simon hopes it’s a squirrel that he can catch for a pet, but they soon discover something much stranger, which eventually leads them to a secret library and a field guide of fantastical creatures. As it turns out, Arthur Spiderwick (a great-great-great uncle, if I did my genealogy correctly) found a way to see and study things from brownies to trolls to hobgoblins, and wrote them all down in a book—but the fae world isn’t too happy to have their secrets revealed, so this kicks off a series of adventures.
The books are shorter than I’d expected, only seven chapters each, with illustrations by DiTerlizzi sprinkled throughout, so I read the first two mostly in one sitting and I’m looking forward to the rest (there are eight books in total). There are lots of versions available; I’m reading from the 20th anniversary set that was released last year, which has fancy new covers but I think is otherwise the same as the original. I’d put the spookiness level at medium: some bumps in the dark, some scary creatures, but it’s also the sort of book where you assume that the kids are going to turn out all right even if they seem to be in danger at times.
SCRAM: Society of Creatures Real And Magical by Rory Lucey
After Jenny has an encounter with a mysterious figure in the library, she and her friends Emiko and Brian start S.C.R.A.M.: the Society of Creatures Real and Magical, and their first order of business is to find a troll. They spend the day dashing around the town of Rockhurst following various clues (and causing a lot of chaos) in their attempts to track down a troll, with pretty hilarious results.
The town is filled with really bizarre people and places: Mifune’s Market has an entire aisle of frog-based foods like froghurt and hot frogs, and the local milliner tries to sell Jenny a hat made out of pennies. There are lots of silly details all over the book, and at the end you’ll find the zine-style “Nice News About Trolls” put together by the S.C.R.A.M. kids. Spookiness level: low—although it’s about a troll hunt, it’s played mostly for laughs.
Double Booking: The Tail of the Mummy Cat written by Kim Shearer and Chas! Pangburn, illustrated by Nic Touris
This comic book is a two-fer: you read one story until you hit the ending halfway through the book, and then you flip the book over and start from the other cover to read the other story. And, as it turns out, it’s really the same story twice, but told from the point of view of the two siblings, Nan and Otto. Their mom is a travel blogger and has just been assigned to an archaeological dig in Egypt, so the two are tagging along for the trip. Otto is the younger of the kids and he loves drawing comics and isn’t too excited about having to leave art camp to go on the trip; Nan admires her mom and wants to be a travel blogger herself. (I have to admit this detail made me laugh: I think we’ve mostly left behind the days when there was money in blogging, let alone when kids might aspire to do the same when they grow up.)
In Egypt, the two of them are left to their own devices one day, which becomes an adventure—though what sort of adventure exactly depends on which kid you follow. They sneak into a section of the tomb that they’re not supposed to enter, and Otto meets a mummy and his cat, which flees out of the pyramid—but since the mummy can’t leave the pyramid, he asks Otto to bring back his cat. The only problem? Nan doesn’t see any of this at all, and she just thinks Otto is making things up and running off without her. Meanwhile, Nan meets Baniti, a kid at the site whose mom is a professor of antiquities, and the two of them get a day trip through Cairo, seeing the sights and experiencing some of the local delights. When the two siblings meet up again at the museum, they’re mad at each other, but they make up and decide to work together on returning the cat (which Nan still can’t see).
The story does have a bit of your after-school special feel, where the kids learn an important lesson about family and everything ties up neatly in half an hour, but I did enjoy the way the two halves of the book gave you the two perspectives of the story. Otto’s half frequently switches to a crayon-looking comic book as he takes over the narration, sometimes imagining himself as a superhero. Meanwhile, Nan’s half sometimes includes excerpts from her travel journal and is a little more about her travel adventures. (It’s a little funny to me that it’s never explained why Otto can see the mummy and mummy cat, but Nan can’t.) One other fun feature is that the two versions of the story, even though they’re both illustrated by Nic Touris, have a slightly different style: Nan’s is a bit more angular and Otto’s is rounded; in Otto’s version, Nan is often seen from below (because Otto is shorter) so he’s looking up to her. It’s a fun little touch that gives each half its own flavor. Spookiness level: fairly low—the mummy isn’t too scary even when he’s being threatening.
Read at Your Own Risk by Remy Lai
This one has a bit of that Diary of a Wimpy Kid look—it’s made to appear like it’s written in a spiral bound notebook, lines and all, with a combination of writing and illustrations. Hannah and her friends play a game to communicate with spirits, but then she winds up being cursed, and this notebook is her journal about the experience. It begins with some weird occurrences like feeling knocked down by nobody and scraping her knee, or having a nightmare and waking up with an actual twisted ankle. There’s a string of bad luck—minor injuries and weird coincidences—but then worse things happen. She seeks advice from a local author of horror books for kids, but that doesn’t go well, either. Eventually this other being starts responding by writing messages to Hannah in her notebook, too.
There’s some real creepiness to this one on the level of those old urban legends that creeped you out when you were in middle school (and in fact the ending to this one does feel very much inspired by one such type of urban legend). The drawings are mostly in a cartoony style like the cover, with the red blood spatters adding a gory touch to the otherwise black-and-white book. Like the cover says, you read this one at your own risk—a fun, spooky read for kids who like creeping themselves out a bit.
A Witch’s Guide to Burning by Aminder Dhaliwal
A young woman wakes up tied to a stake, badly burned and with no memory of who she is or why she is there. She is rescued by Yew-Veda, a witch doctor, who is accompanied by Bufo Wonder, a witch who managed to turn himself into a toad on accident. As the three travel together and Yew-Veda works through a long series of treatments and rituals, Singe (as they decide to call this burned witch) gradually starts to piece together bits of her past, and we learn a bit more about this world. Witches are often associated with a town, using their magic to help the town. When they can’t keep up with the town’s demands, or when the town decides they’re ready for a new witch, the old witch is burned: it doesn’t kill her, but it removes her magic (and her memory) and she is replaced.
As Singe begins to remember who she was, she is convinced that once she is healed and has her magic back, she can return to her own town, more powerful than before, and become the sort of witch they would welcome back. But can she trust the people who burned her? Yew-Veda has strong opinions about that, and also has a particular experience of how the healing process should work, but Singe’s journey doesn’t always line up, and there’s a lot of tension about what lies in Singe’s future.
The book is a mix of prose and comics; it reminds me (just a little bit) of The 13½ Lives of Captain Bluebear by Walter Moers, a novel that played around a lot with typography, because quite often there are words in the prose sections that incorporate illustrations: little pupils inserted in the Es in “eyes,” flames rising from the word “burning,” faint repeats of the word “echoes.” The comics portions are almost entirely in black and white, with just an occasional touch of color that really stands out even more because of its sparing use. The book itself is really beautiful: the decorations that appear light yellow in the cover image above are actually a copper-colored foil on the hardcover edition.
The story is a lot about Singe learning who she is—and who she wants to be, though Yew-Veda and Bufo also have their own journeys as well. It’s about fighting demons—both figurative and literal—and about healing, and although it’s set in a world with magic and talking toads, there are definitely messages that feel relevant to our real world, particularly about expectations that are placed on women and their role in society. Spookiness level: medium; even with the literal demons that the witches face, I think the real weight is the internal struggles that Singe faces throughout the story.
Murder Book by Hilary Fitzgerald Campbell
Okay, so this one isn’t a spooky fiction book—it’s more of a slightly fictionalized memoir about the true crime genre, particularly about murder. So although it’s not specifically Halloween monsters, there’s definitely a lot of stuff in here that is truly creepy. But also surprisingly funny!
Hilary Campbell is obsessed with true crime: she watches movies and TV shows, reads books, and listens to podcasts about murder. Her conversations with her mom (and her siblings, and her close friends, and random people she meets throughout her life) are about murder. In this book, Campbell digs into the whys: why is she so interested in true crime? Why is it such a huge genre? Why does the audience seem to be overwhelmingly women? Is it because she saw the movie Zodiac and got hooked by David Fincher’s cool portrayal of the time period that she became interested in stories about serial killers? Is it because of her genes (since her mom, grandma, and great-grandma all shared this interest)? Maybe it’s tied to anxiety, or wanting to figure out puzzles.
Campbell digs into the history of some of the different formats: murder-based movies (both fiction and non-fiction), true crime books, and—of course—podcasts, kicking off with 2014’s Serial. In the book, she depicts herself going about her day, talking to people at the bar while she draws comics, traveling to see her family, calling her sister on the phone, even imagining herself teaching a class about “Murder Sh*t” to her mom—as her way of filling in the reader on everything from her own personal experiences in life to the details of Ted Bundy’s killing spree. (I did not expect, when I started this book, to see Campbell telling us a story while using a toilet, but it actually happens multiple times!)
As somebody who has not really been invested in the true crime genre, I found this book really fascinating and informative, both about some specifics of certain cases, but also about this whole genre and how it has grown and changed over the decades. One of Campbell’s theories is that women are particularly drawn to this genre because they hear the stories and think “that could be me,” and learning about these murders helps them feel like they could find ways to prevent it from happening to them. But as more women are now telling these stories, it also means that both the types of stories that are told and the ways they are being told are shifting.
The book is both thoughtful and funny, and I think even if you are not a “murderino,” it’s a really good peek into this world. I would probably recommend this one for teenagers and adults because of the content and occasional language, though as Campbell herself describes, a lot of this is what she was exposed to much earlier because she was the youngest kid in the family. Spookiness level: You get some detailed stories about various serial killers and their exploits, which I’d argue is creepier than a lot of the fictional monsters in some of the other stories on this list—and at the same time Campbell is somehow able to relate things in a way that puts those scary things into a format that is readable. Murder … but with jokes?
My Current Reads
I always have more in my reading pile when I make these occasion-related posts than I have time to read, so there were some more books that just didn’t make it on today’s list. (That’s why you get things like the three-year-old Murder Book.) Next week if I manage to get to it in time I’ll have a stack of books about (gulp) politics and elections, since that’ll be coming up soon!
Disclosure: I received review copies of these books; affiliate links to Bookshop.org help support my writing and independent booksellers!
