Scary Stories We Love

In the days leading up to Halloween, during conversations about costumes, candy, and celebrations for the coming spooky holiday, I asked authors, friends, and teen readers alike:

What was your favorite scary book as a kid?

Here are some of their responses.

"Well, I was always a fan of Where the Wild Things Are...that was one of my favorites year round. As I got older, I sorta skipped kids' books and went right into the old Doc Savage pulp reprints. After my pulp phase, I discovered Richard Matheson's I Am Legend and there was no going back. I found my love in horror and there was no looking back. That book scared the crap out of me. From there I discovered Stephen King, devouring Carrie and Salem's Lot, but it was The Shining that again reduced me to a quivering mass...but I loved every second!" - Tom Sniegoski

"I LOVED Baby-sitters Beware, The Baby-Sitters Club Super Mystery #2 by Ann M. Martin. The girls were stalked by a creepy dude. So unsettling for a BSC book!!!" - Courtney Summers

"As a kid: Wait Till Helen Comes by Mary Downing Hahn. As a teen, I read memoirs about tragedy, which scared me plenty!" - Courtney Sheinmel

"Ghost Cat by Beverly Butler changed how I felt about ghosts, cats, and Wisconsin farms. Spooky and a little quirky, which is my favorite flavor of spooky. Wait Till Helen Comes by Mary Downing Hahn was suggested to me by my bookish friend in grade school. What I remember most about this book are the fires, the liars, and the skeletons. I'm sure I'm making it sound less chilling than it was for me at the time. It scared me. Also, Carrie was scary. I was the first Stephen King book I ever read. I was in high school and I think it's the only frightening novel I read at that age. I metabolize horror very slowly and read it sparingly. My husband is the scary writer. I'm the funny one." - Kristen Tracy

"Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark by Alvin Schwartz. It gave me nightmares." - 15-year-old reader

"There was this book about a kid who was visited by monsters every night and the monsters broke his toys. Every night. Until one night when he asked them not to do it anymore, and then they fixed his toys. I can't remember the title." - another 15-year-old reader (If anyone is familiar with this book and knows the title/author, please share the info in the comments below!)

"By far, the scariest book I remember as a young reader was James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl. After all, what could be more horrifying than rolling around the countryside embedded deep in the dark, cloying, moist tunnels of an enormous piece of fruit while surrounded by huge insects? If you don't suffocate in there, you run the risk of a tunnel collapse or that the enormous spider might decide to sting you and wrap you in its web. And even if all else goes well, what if the peach stops rolling with the opening facing down? Buried alive. I still shudder at the thought of that book... I was also frightened by Shel Silverstein's foot." - Eric Luper

How about you, gentle reader? What was your favorite scary book as a kid? Leave a comment below and let me know!

Want to check out some of my favorite scary stories? Looking for more books to pick up this Halloween? Here are some booklists I created that you might enjoy:
Go Gothic
Monster Mash
Vamping It Up
Mind Readers and Ghostly Visitors
Teen Mystery and Horror Books

Airborn by Kenneth Oppel

Matt Cruse feels most comfortable when aboard an airship. He loves being in the air aboard the Aurora as a cabin boy. On watch one night, Matt discovers a damaged balloon with an elderly man in it. As they attempt to rescue the man, he mutters incoherently about a fierce and massive cat-like creature that flies through the air and then dies of his wounds.

As the Aurora embarks on a flight to Sydney Australia, a small air vessel docks with the Aurora and disembarks Kate de Vries and her chaperone. We find out that Kate is the granddaughter of the man who died as the Aurora rescued him. She is set on proving to the world that her grandfather was not crazy and the creatures he was muttering about actually do exist.

In due course, the pirates arrive, a massive storm hits, the Aurora crash lands on a deserted island, Kate and Matt are kidnapped and a romance buds. A terrific swashbuckling steampunk adventure. Lots of gizmos and gadgets are discussed and used, the Victorian era holds strong, and readers are bound to fall for our two heroes.

100 Books Heading to Ballou Library - LET'S KEEP GOING!!!!

The first boxes of books from the amazon wish list have arrived at Ballou SR High School in Washington DC and as you can see, the students are delighted! Thanks so much to the many people who have bought books and helped spread the word on the Book Fair for Ballou. Your assistance and support are very much appreciated by all of us at guyslitwire & Ballou Library.

But wait -

WE ARE NOT DONE YET!!!!!

The wish list remains active and the Book Fair is still going on. As you know from our original post, the book fair is the primary way in which the Ballou students receive books they dearly want. There are still many many novels on the list, as well as cookbooks, manga, graphic novels, some DC character encyclopedias AND SO MUCH MORE!

We are committed to getting another 100 books to Ballou and hope that you will help us. We can't do it alone - we need you to help us spread the word so we can get as many books as possible bought off the list.

Remember - Ballou does not have the budget to buy all the books their students want and need. (This young man dreams of visiting Paris - now he has a guidebook to help him plan!)

There are Spanish language books on the list (Like "One Fish/Two Fish/Red Fish/Blue Fish"!) that will be used in classes, there are biographies and histories, poetry and science and SO MANY NOVELS.

There is science fiction, fantasy, mystery, and a ton of teen dramarama. There are books to learn from and there are books to have fun with. There is, in the 350+ books remaining, literally something for everyone.

Honestly, there is so much to make us all angry in the world today - in America today - that something like helping Ballou becomes even more important. It's a small thing but it will have a big impact AND IT IS ALL POSITIVE.

This is a good thing we can do to make life better for a bunch of students and a truly awesome librarian. There is no downside to this effort - it's all wonderful, and it's all up to us.

Help us get more books into the hands of the students at Ballou SR High school; help us make more book dreams come true.

The quick link: http://tinyurl.com/BookFairBallouHS

Long link: https://www.amazon.com/gp/registry/wishlist/2CU17Q38C3P68/ref=cm_wl_sortbar_o_page_1?ie=UTF8&sort=universal-title

Ghosts by Raina Telgemeir

Catrina and her family are moving from the hot, desert-like conditions of Southern California to a location further north. Catrina's sister, Maya, is ill and the northern climate is thought to be better for her.

Catrina doesn't want to go, she misses her friends, she misses her old place. She tries her best not to complain, but she's a teen and that's what teens do. 

One their first night, Catrina and Maya decide to explore the town a little. They find a seemingly abandoned arcade. It's dark, creepy, and a awesome at the same time. It's here that they discover one of their neighbours, and he drops a bombshell on them. 

The town they just moved to is haunted. 

A Day No Pigs Would Die by Robert Newton Peck

Pigs do not make good pets. Better said, pigs do not make good pets when you are a rural farm boy and times are hard. With a title like this one, you almost know what's coming and that is what makes this book so engrossing.

HERE WE GO - THE 2016 BOOK FAIR FOR BALLOU HIGH SCHOOL IS ON!!!!!!!!!

It's that time of the year again!

As our regular readers know, Guys Lit Wire annually teams up with Ballou Senior High School librarian Melissa Jackson to host a book fair for this Washington DC high school. This is our 7th year doing a book fair and 5th with Ballou High. Why do we continue to work with this school in particular?

1. Because it has an incredibly dedicated & determined librarian who works hard everyday for her students and we want to do what we can to make her job a little easier.

2. Because the library's budget is extremely limited in the funds that can be used for titles chosen outside of the district lists and our list is built entirely under Melissa's direction and approval addressing the specific wants and needs of her students.

3. Because the students and teachers contribute titles to the wish list, meaning that it is full of books that appeal to a wide range of interests and reading abilities. There is literally something for everyone from romance, mystery and fantasy to guidebooks, Spanish language basics (for the classroom), manga, graphic novels and SO MUCH MORE.

4. Can I talk some more about the books on the list? We've got great big literary titles, intense biographies, history, science and heck......even Archie comics!

5. But mostly, we team up with Melissa and Ballou High School because this is what we all should do. We all should do our part to help the kids of this country get as broad an access to as many wonderful books as possible. We should do what we can to make sure that every student can check out the books they want; the books they have been yearning to read that will make them laugh and cry and think deeply.

It is no surprise that we love books around here and helping to make a school library stronger is pretty much a dream for all of us, and one we hope you will be on board with as well.

THE DETAILS

The Amazon wish list can be found here. It is also easily searchable at Amazon under "Ballou High School". If you would like to embed a link in a post or tweet (and PLEASE DO!!), use this one: http://tinyurl.com/BookFairBallouHS

And here is the url in case the links are not working for you:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/registry/wishlist/2CU17Q38C3P68/ref=cm_wl_sortbar_o_page_1?ie=UTF8&sort=universal-title

The mailing address is already set-up for checkout and there are nearly 500 books to choose from with a wide price range. We do hope you will find a book that you want to send to Ballou and help us make life a little better for a great bunch of a kids.

The Book Fair for Ballou High School Library will stay open for 2 weeks and we will keep you posted here on how things go. Be sure to follow @chasingray (GLW moderator Colleen Mondor's twitter feed) and watch the Ballou Library feed for shoutouts from Melissa (@BallouLibrary) as books show up.

THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! 

The Ballou Book Club working on the list two weeks ago.

Pet Bugs: A Kid's Guide to Catching & Keeping Touchable Insects

I was not able to upload a picture of this book for some unknown reason, but here are the section headings in Pet Bugs: "Bugs that eat other bugs," "Bugs that have special tricks to avoid being gobbled up," "Bugs that look like something they're not," "Bugs that live and work in groups," "Bugs that communicate with each other in special ways," and "Bugs that multiply - before your eyes!" You'll find out about praying mantises, walkingsticks, spittlebugs, monarch butterflies, tent caterpillars, lightning bugs, stag beetles, cicadas (some people call them locusts), crickets, Japanese beetles,and even mealworms (hungry?)

TETRIS by Box Brown

What is black and white and yellow all over? Why, it's this new biography of the popular video game, TETRIS. (Do not adjust your screen - the cover image to the right isn't crooked; the cover itself depicts everything at a slant.)

I have to confess that I found parts of this biography to be a bit bewildering.

At first, despite the book being titled TETRIS, I assumed it would be the biography of the guy who created it. And the book starts out with him - a guy named Alexey Pajitnov, and his friend Vladimir Pokhilko. Alexey conceived of the game as part of his thinking about the importance of games, not just as diversions but as tools that help the brain solve problems and hone skills.




No sooner does the book go there, than it jumps back by thousands of years to the idea of the beginning of games following through the history of games to the development of the Nintendo Corporation. So I wondered whether this book was more about Nintendo.

Kids of Appetite by David Arnold

I recently pressed a copy of David Arnold’s Mosquitoland onto a colleague recently, only to find it sitting on my desk at school the next morning. This could mean one of two things:

1)  She hated it, gave up on it, and didn’t want to face my disappointment, or

      2)  She had read the entire book in one evening because it was unputdownable.

It was the latter.