13. "Howliday Inn" by James Howe

Harold the dog and Chester the cat return in this sequel to Bunnicula. When their family goes on vacation, Harold and Chester find themselves boarding at Chateau Bow Wow, which Chester dubs Howliday Inn because of mysterious nocturnal howls and other creepy goings-on. After one of the other dogs disappears under suspicious circumstances, Chester concludes that a murderer is loose...and then Chester himself vanishes, leaving the hapless Harold to investigate as best he can.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book, but I have to confess that I flipped ahead to the end...about three times...to make sure all the animals survive.

10-12. "Scary Stories" by Alvin Schwartz

Alvin Schwartz's collections Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, More Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, and Scary Stories 3: More Tales to Chill Your Bones fuse folklore, humor, urban legend, and campfire tales. The entries range from chilling to nonsensical to stupid to funny. Some of these tales don't translate well from oral to written transmission; Schwartz includes instructions about how to tell the stories most effectively, but this necessarily keeps readers from experiencing those stories in the way they were meant to be experienced. Still, these are fun collections, with stories that will be familiar to anyone who's attended a sleepover as well as some quirky ditties. Schwartz includes notes about sources at the end of each collection, for aspiring folklorists, and he also provides comprehensive bibliographies.


Stephan Gammell's spooky illustrations are a highlight of all three books. His gargoyle figures are especially grotesque, original, and creepy!

9. "Food for the Dead" by Michael E. Bell

Folklorist Michael E. Bell's Food for the Dead: On the Trail of New England's Vampires is, by turns, fascinating and tedious. Bell details his search, over more than 20 years, for stories of exhumations in 18th- and 19th-century New England, specifically Rhode Island and surrounding areas of Massachusetts and Connecticut. He traces a tradition in which families decimated by consumption (tuberculosis) would sometimes, in desperation, exhume bodies of their deceased relatives and burn the hearts in the hope of halting the disease's spread. In some cases, the ashes of the hearts were mixed with water and given to the consumptive patient. However, in most (maybe all) of the cases in which Bell succeeds in verifying facts and dates, this folk remedy failed.

Some of Bell's insights and research about the reasons for folk remedies and the development of urban legends are quite interesting, but there's also a fair amount of repetition. I found myself confused at times because so many of the stories and names seemed so similar, but that may also be a byproduct of my taking several weeks to finish this book.

I think Food for the Dead would hold more appeal for folklorists and medical historians than vampire aficionados.

1. "The Graveyard Book" by Neil Gaiman

I know plenty of people who think Neil Gaiman is amazing, but I'm a bit more ambivalent. Half the time I think he's amazing, and half the time I feel like he's overrated. I did not, for example, find Coraline deliciously creepy, as many others did. So I had mixed feelings about reading The Graveyard Book, but I decided to give it a try anyway. I'm glad I did: It turned out to be satisfying, quirky, thought-provoking, and, yes, deliciously creepy.

Our hero is young Nobody Owens, known as Bod, who crawls into a graveyard one night as the rest of his family is being murdered in their beds. (The killer carelessly left the front door open, allowing the toddler to escape.) Adopted by ghosts and raised under the guardianship of the graveyard's resident vampire, Bod grows up protected from the man who killed his family. Various residents of the graveyard teach him history, reading, writing, and other academic subjects, as well as more esoteric skills such as Fading, Haunting, and Dreamwalking. Bod is a typical boy, but his coming-of-age adventures include being captured by ghouls, finding ancient treasure buried in a hillside, and befriending the ghost of a witch. Finally, Bod must leave the graveyard to confront the evil that left him orphaned.

I do wish Gaiman had fleshed out his villains a bit more, but they're original and entertaining. Bod is a likable, noble, and sympathetic hero, and the denizens of the graveyard make for a diverse, often funny, very human cast. And of course, although I knew what was going to happen at the end, I still cried a little. But that's me.

The Graveyard Book was my Halloween read, a young adult book that offers plenty of appeal to so-called grownups as well. Heartily recommend!