Shivers, Scares, and Goosebumps - Vonnie Winslow Crist

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AUTHOR: Vonnie Winslow Crist

GENRE: Middle-grade Anthology, Horror.
RATING: 3.9 stars.

In a Nutshell: A fun spooky anthology for tweens and teens.

This middle-grade horror anthology contains 23 stories and 4 verses/poems. (The blurb says it has 26 stories in all, so I don’t know what’s the extra tale in my copy!)

Each story begins with a creepy B&W illustration sketched by the author herself, which gives a great (and at times, creepy) glimpse of what’s to come in the tale ahead. There are detailed notes at the end of the book about the creatures appearing in the stories and the author's inspiration for each tale.

Many of the stories worked well in terms of their execution. They are scary in different ways, incorporating folklore and myths and superstitions into an interesting medley. Zombies, goblins, fairies, scarecrows, vultures,… - each story brings in something new.

A few of the stories ended too abruptly for my liking but I guess that comes from my preference for well-settled endings. Children, with their vivid imaginations, might be able to enjoy the open endings more. (That said, one of my favourite stories in this book was ‘Wildwood Church’, which was open-ended but stopped at just the right point!)

As this aims at the 9+ audience, the writing is suitable for that age group. One unique point in this collection (which I haven’t seen in any anthology so far) is that the author has included what she calls “jump scares” at the end of some of the stories. Thus, if anyone is reading the story aloud to a group, she provides a little hint of what action can be made to make the ending scarier. I quite liked this idea.

I was surprised to see four poetic verses also included in this collection. Unfortunately, three of those were too short to impress me, but the fourth one – ‘On a Quiet Road’ – was superb.

As always, I rated the stories individually, based on how I think they would work for the tween/teen crowd. Fourteen of the twenty-three stories reached/crossed the 4 star mark. Some of my top favourite tales, other than the two mentioned above, were ‘Mudpuppy’, ‘One Easter’, ‘Last Farm’, ‘Ogerhunches’, and ‘Night Raven’, each getting a five star.

This will make a nice creepy present for middle graders during the spooky season. (Or you could buy it for your kids right now and spread some more chills in these cold wintry nights. 😉)

3.90 stars, based on the average of my ratings for each story. (I didn’t rate the poems as I am not a poem person at all.)

I received a complimentary copy of this book from the author and these are my honest thoughts about it.

The book is available on Kindle Unlimited.

Comments

  1. Vonnie Winslow Crist29 December 2022 at 09:07

    Thanks for the review. Some of your favorite stories from the collection are my favorites as well.

    ReplyDelete

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