Once My Looks Go, I've Got Nothing

In 1981, Alvin Schwartz unleashed his horror classic Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark upon the world, and it and its two sequels would scar psyches for generations to come. 1984 saw the release of In a Dark, Dark Room , a similar book that Schwartz had tailored to somewhat younger readers. Unlike the Scary Stories books, though, this one never got a sequel...or did it? Ghosts! , published in 1991, is an oft-overlooked installment in Alvin Schwartz's oeuvre that serves in many ways as a spiritual successor to In a Dark, Dark Room . In belongs to the somewhat redundantly named "I Can Read" book series, like Dark Room , so it is targeted at a similarly young audience, and of course it shares the supernatural theme of the aforementioned works. But how does this one stack up against the veritable murderer's row of Schwartz's earlier classics? Let's find out. The first thing that jumps out at you is the artwork. Victoria Chess has a strikingly different st

     As I continue my quest to present the world's most thorough and scholarly examination of the Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark series of youth horror books (having already written Power Rankings articles for the first and second books as well as an opinion piece about the audio books ), I would be remiss to ignore another book that is closely related to the series in spirit if not name. If I'm going to write this series of articles, after all, I must do it correctly. Heavy is the head that wears the crown, and all that.      So imagine: you're a folklorist that enjoys frightening children, and you're doing a pretty bang-up job of ensuring that the nation's youth can only slumber in nightmare-haunted fits and starts. But there's a problem: what about the particularly young children? The ones that can read but whose parents still shield them from imagery of blood-soaked corpses? What is to be done about them? The answer to these questions is fright t