‘Tis the season to be spooky, and in keeping with the flavour, two leading children’s publishing houses have come out with an anthology each of stories that will make you want to cower behind your sofa.
Scholastic’s Spooky Stories has my contribution called “Mirror-Self”, which is about a young girl who discovers her grandmother’s creepy secret. In addition, it has eight other stories, from Anshumani Ruddra, Nilanjana Roy, Arunava Sinha and others.
The Puffin Book of Spooky Ghost Stories, edited by Jerry Pinto, is of course from Penguin’s children’s imprint, Puffin. It has illustrious names such as Ruskin Bond, Jerry Pinto, Subhadra Sen Gupta and Paro Anand. There are thirteen horrific tales in this collection, and “Virus Here” is the title of my story, about an 11-year-old who finds a little surprise lurking in her new laptop.
Check them out if you can. Targeted at the age group 10 and above, you’re never really too old for a nice little scare, are you? Chills down the spine are good for health!
~PD
It’s not good for the health to have your heart stop or chew off your finger nails or stop sleeping, and really bad for the environment if you are too scared of the dark to turn the lights off at night.
But it is rather fun to make others read scary stuff and then tease them for being afraid. If Niklas has been as clever as Payal, he would have had a blog too and tricked people into reading scary stuff, saying it was healthy and good, and then tease them when they cry in the comments.
Seems like good stuff! 🙂 Wish I can lay my hands on this collection soon.
Gee i never thought of spooks as environment unfriendly! That’s a real new perspective! 🙂
Payal, send one nice one to Moffat too 😛
(here comes the math… 2+5… hmmm *head whirs*)
*hands tissue to Niklas* There, there, don’t cry. Sorry I tricked you and made you cry!
@Vinod: Aren’t you in the US now? Tsk, if you were here, you’d have been able to get them!
@Swapna: And no, thank you, Moffat has enough spooky ideas of his own!
as a child I used to spook really easily…I still spook a little and close my eyes in the real scary parts when watching a horror movie.
Those books would not have been my pick as a child…but I think children today are more immune to scary stuff, what do you think?
Hi Karen, good to see you here. 🙂
Well, I have to admit, I was a macabre sort as a child and loved creepy things. But you’re right, I wonder too if the scary stuff is more popular with kids these days — just witness the inordinate amount of books and merchandise of the horror genre available for them. And I actually came across creepy, monster tales collections for preschoolers.
😯
I hate horror in any form, audio, video or print. The worst part is that people around me seem to love it and I’ve been subjected to a lot of horror movies in the recent past. As for books, I get far more freedom in choosing what to read, and more importantly, even if I do hide my face in the pillow while reading, no one will ever know! 😀
Yeah, that’s the amazing thing about adulthood! One can hide in one’s room and shriek into one’s pillow! No need to show off any more how “brave” one is by reading/looking at macabre stuff…
😀