13 Scary (and Not-So-Scary) Books for Kids And here are Halloween games and activities your children can do. For homemade costume fun, check out 31 quick and easy homemade Halloween costumes. If you’re looking for more Halloween fun, here are 36 easy Halloween decoration and craft ideas for children. Below are 13 of our favorite books for kids that are perfect for the month of October! You can make great memories with your children by reading about bats, ghosts, pumpkins and all that this spooky season brings with it. Sharing scary stories is one of the most fun parts of Halloween. The views and opinions expressed in this article are the author's, and do not necessarily reflect those of SYFY WIRE, SYFY, or NBC Universal.Halloween season is here! What better way to get in the spirit of things than reading spine-tingling tales and spooky stories with your own little ghosts and goblins? There is comfort in reading about characters who successfully triumph over a beast far bigger than them, and no matter your age, folklore stories perpetually remain appealing. A lot of these supernatural beings exist only in the imagination - but as with adult scary stories, they can often be a stand-in for something very real.
The '80s and '90s produced plenty of horror movie classics, but it was also a fruitful period for scary stories aimed at young readers, shaping the next generation of filmmakers and writers. Reading horror as a child is a way of exploring the world. Fear often comes from a lack of control, and with these adventure books, there is an aspect of getting to guide the narrative.
Titles include The Ghost in the Mirror and The Haunted Tower, which were perfect for a budding Sherlock Holmes who wanted to solve a mystery themselves.
For me, the Usborne Puzzle Adventure series provided a bigger thrill, as instead of turning to a page number, you had to complete a puzzle to progress. It was an excellent novelty that put you in the creative driving seat. As a reader, you could solve a murder or hunt for ghosts.
Between 19, 180 books in this series were released, published in 38 different languages, which sold 250 million copies worldwide. Gammell’s original illustrations are part of the overall Scary Stories experience and, frankly, can be considered just as vital as Schwartz's words.Ĭhoose Your Own Adventure stories recently underwent the Black Mirror treatment, but long before Netflix, these novels let the reader guide their own way.
This sanitized version was met with more horror from fans, who were aghast at how watered-down the images had become. For the 30th-anniversary edition released in 2011, publisher HarperCollins commissioned A Series of Unfortunate Events artist Brett Helquist to illustrate this update. Part of the thrill of Schwartz’s collections is the Stephen Gammell illustrations accompanying the terrifying words. Released in 1984, this was a collection of poems and stories that probably kickstarted many obsessions with the supernatural. This book was aimed at the middle school/tween market, but Schwartz also catered to the slightly younger audience with In a Dark, Dark Room and Other Scary Stories. Short stories with titles including “The Girl Who Stood on a Grave,” “The Ghost with the Bloody Fingers,” and the ambiguously ominous “The Attic” featured in the first volume. Some tried to get libraries to pull the title but were unsuccessful. These are cautionary tales that scared generations and prompted an outcry from groups that believed they were too frightening for innocent minds. Released over 10 years beginning in 1981, the books provided an entry point into horror for many young readers. Credit: Eric Carpenter/John Kobal Foundation/Getty Imagesįolklore and urban legends provide the foundation of many scary stories, including Alvin Schwartz’s Scary Stories trilogy.