Scary Stories for Summer Nights

ghostfaced tree-no words

Who said trees couldn’t be scary?

Anybody can scare a middle-grader with age-inappropriate scenarios. But what makes a book frightening within a strictly middle-grade world view?

Once my first book came out last month, I braced myself for reader reactions. One thing that I was surprised to hear is that Deadwood can be scary for the youngest middle-grade readers.  I didn’t know I was writing a scary book — suspenseful, yes, but scary? It’s not violent or graphic by any means, and I have a low tolerance for gore even as an adult. And it’s about a tree — not high on anyone’s list of spooky things.

Then I realized that the scariness comes from the supernatural occurrence in an otherwise realistic setting. A book is scarier if it seems as if it could really happen in the reader’s world. At 2 a.m., what seems scarier: a tale of a harmless ghost that hums sweet nursery rhymes in the hallway, or a book about a ferocious dragon that terrorizes a medieval village? (Trick question: nursery rhymes are naturally scary.)

But as a principle of spooky tales, familiarity makes frightening, whether the suburban school settings of R.L.Stine or “it happened to someone my cousin knows” of urban legends and campfire tales.

Read the list on Project Mayhem >>