Home > Reading Comprehension > book reviews > Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark

Book Review:Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark collected from Folklore and Retold by Alvin Schwartz

Story-telling is vastly underrated in the positive effect it can have on reading. When students have heard a story and then see it in print, they realize that the printed word can convey much more than dry recitation. There are several "Scary Stories" books; though I would hesitate to make these the only reading a student did over a period of time, these can be confidence-builders for students who want short reading without childlike reading. The stories are short, so an entire story can often be completed in 10 minutes or less, even by a novice reader (especially if the story has already been told, or the student is trading paragraphs with a tutor). The ghost story genre is popular among many adolescents and adults, especially these 'classic' tales. These tales are good practice for reading with expression and meaning, and some stories include directions for reading them for good effect. The book also includes information about scary stories, and references about their sources.

Title & Author:Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark collected from Folklore and Retold by Alvin Schwartz; HarperTrophy, 1981.

Length: 81 pages of stories; each story is roughly 1-3 pages long.

Print size: Larger than 'adult' books but not childish.

Other readability issues: This book works well with very reluctant readers, especially older boys who are fascinated by the gross. Impossible things happen as a matter of course in ghost stories, so some suspension of concrete reality is required for comprehension. These stories would not be particularly valuable in learning comprehension, though, beyond basic phrasing, vocabulary, or making predicitions. Some of the stories make very little sense and are comprised mostly of scary sounds and phrases. There are the occasional inferences to be made, though.

These stories are not gentle; severed body parts and escaped prisoners and people with magical and evil powers are common. The tales survive through folklore because they scare people, so keep this in mind when deciding whether this is an appropriate selection. The illustrations are also fairly creepy.

Summary: Alvin Schwartz collected scary stories from various cultures.

Typical words: Here are some typical words from the stories; it would be wise to see how many of these your students can read before expecting them to read independently.