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punchofwishes's review
3.0
This was an interesting collection of stories. Definitely creepy and a few of them I quite enjoyed, but also a bit old-fashioned and not the most original. The illustrations were cool but very infrequent.
crowyhead's review against another edition
3.0
This collection of creepy stories is actually based around a series of paintings Jan Pienkowski created, which is a really cool idea. It's frequently kind of obvious, though, that the paintings were conceived first -- the stories fit with them, but not in the same way that they would if they had been painted as illustrations. I'm not sure if that's really a fault or not, but it's occasionally distracting. The stories are alternately funny and frightening, but overall it's not really Aiken's best work, I don't think.
thisdivinelight's review against another edition
5.0
I first read this when I was 10 or something close - picked it off the school library as a lark. And 19 years later, this still remains one of my favorite 'scary' books! I actually searched all over the city when I was 18 and bought a copy, only to lend it to a friend who never returned it. And now, I just can't seem to find it anywhere.
For someone who is not a big fan of reading horror stories, the short stories (based on a series of paintings) were a delight - simply because the scares were well balanced and invoked with a subtlety that would leave any reader confused with a haunting sense of 'now you see it - now you don't'. Which is always good because then, at night, if the monsters try and come out, you can always pretend them away.
An excellent read for children over 10 years, if you want to introduce them to this particular genre, the book is also well written and hence of particular recommendation for children who are beginning to display a certain talent for writing. The book is also recommended to adults (like me) who have a fear of horror stories and yet wouldn't mind reading something with just the right touch of spookiness.
I loved it when I first read it - and still do. Which is why, it's still stuck in my head two decades from when I first read it.
For someone who is not a big fan of reading horror stories, the short stories (based on a series of paintings) were a delight - simply because the scares were well balanced and invoked with a subtlety that would leave any reader confused with a haunting sense of 'now you see it - now you don't'. Which is always good because then, at night, if the monsters try and come out, you can always pretend them away.
An excellent read for children over 10 years, if you want to introduce them to this particular genre, the book is also well written and hence of particular recommendation for children who are beginning to display a certain talent for writing. The book is also recommended to adults (like me) who have a fear of horror stories and yet wouldn't mind reading something with just the right touch of spookiness.
I loved it when I first read it - and still do. Which is why, it's still stuck in my head two decades from when I first read it.
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