Would
you like to plan a different kind of Halloween party
this year? How about having a Halloween reading? It's
the perfect time to tell some frightening and suspenseful
tales. Invite all of your bookish friends, dress up
as creepy literary characters, and share scary stories
in the dark. You can ask your friends to bring along
their favorite spooky stories, poems, urban legends,
or excerpts from a longer novel. The original greatest
scares and terrors of all time can be found in classic
literature. Your friends might even write their own.
Putting on a Halloween theatrical show can also be fun,
especially if you dress up in costume. For example,
you can act out a scary scene from a Shakespearean drama.
Many of his plays are brimming with dark castles, ghosts,
witches, fairies, supernatural omens, dastardly deeds-the
stuff of dreams and nightmares. A few good choices would
be "Hamlet," "Macbeth," and "Midsummer
Night's Dream." Another possibility would be to
do a reader's theater rendition of the "War of
the Worlds" radio broadcast script.
Although it's not a good idea to let children spend
too much time dwelling on scary stories and frightening
images, let's face it-kids love to get scared. Consider
the campfire tale that is designed to both frighten
and delight, as the kids scare themselves again and
again. Besides being entertaining, scary stories can
actually help children face their own fears and master
them. Note: Please exercise care when reading scary
stories to young children. Read the story yourself first,
to determine if it is appropriate.
Anthologies
"A Halloween Reader: Poems, Stories, and Plays
from Halloweens Past," by Lesley Pratt Bannatyne.
"Grimm's Fairy Tales," by Wilhelm and Jacob
Grimm.
"Scared Silly: A Halloween Book for the Brave,"
by Marc Brown.
"Scary Stories," by Peter Glassman and Barry
Moser.
"Scary Stories and Songs," by Diane Goode.
"Tales of Terror," by Edgar Allan Poe.
Novels
"Dracula," by Bram Stoker.
"Frankenstein," by Mary Shelley.
"The Halloween Tree," by Ray Bradbury.
"Hound of the Baskervilles," by Sir Arthur
Conan Doyle.
"Something Wicked This Way Comes," by Ray
Bradbury.
Short Stories
"A Ghost Story," by Mark Twain.
"Feathertop: A Moralized Legend," by Nathaniel
Hawthorne.
"Ken's Mystery," aka "The Grave of Ethelind
Fionguala," by Julian Hawthorne.
"The Canterville Ghost," by Oscar Wilde.
"The Child That Went With the Fairies," by
J.S. Le Fanu.
"The Devil and Tom Walker" and "The Legend
of Sleepy Hollow," by Washington Irving.
"The Monkey's Paw," by W.W. Jacobs.
Plays
"Hamlet," "Macbeth," and "Midsummer
Night's Dream," by William Shakespeare.
"War of the Worlds," from the 1938 radio broadcast,
by the Mercury Theatre.
Poems
"The Bat," by Theodore Roethke.
"The Old Wife and the Ghost," by James Reeves.
"The Raven," by Edgar Allan Poe.
"The Ride by Nights" and "Someone,"
by Walter de la Mare.
"The Witch of Willowby Wood," by Rowena Bennett.
"The Witches' Song," by William Shakespeare.
"Who's Afraid?" by L. Frank Baum.
Picture Books and Easy Readers
"A Beastly Story," by Bill Martin and Steven
Kellogg.
"Bony Legs," by Joanna Cole.
"Boo! Stories to Make You Jump," by Laura
Cecil.
"Go Away, Big Green Monster!" by Ed Emberley.
"Inside a House That Is Haunted," by Alyssa
Satin Capucilli and Tedd Arnold.
"Monster Night at Grandma's House," by Richard
Peck and Don Freeman.
"The Ghost on Saturday Night," by Sid Fleischman.
"The Ghost Eye Tree," by Bill Martin.
"The Teeny Tiny Woman," by Paul Galdone.
"What Was I Scared Of?" by Dr. Seuss.
Reading some spooky books? Make a Creepy Snake Bookmark
to hold your place. You will need an ice cream stick
with wide ends (found in Haagen Dazs bars); tempura
paint or permanent marker (black, green, or orange);
a 1" piece of thin red ribbon; scissors; glue;
and a pair of wiggle eyes. Paint the ice cream stick
and let it dry. At one end of the ribbon, cut out a
tiny triangle to form a forked tongue. Glue the two
wiggle eyes onto one end of the ice cream stick. Glue
the ribbon to the underside of that same end so the
forked tongue is sticking out.
