Librarians who work with children know that kids love scary stories: chilling tales reread until the spines break and pages fall out. They constantly ask for more fright-filled short stories. More. More. More.
​Maintaining a selection of hair-raising tales is a never-ending task. Finding middle grade narratives with just the right amount of fright factor, but not veering into gristly gore can be a challenge.
​Josh Allen has this covered with Out to Get You: 13 Tales of Weirdness and Woe. Stories are quick reads: tightly structured tales told briefly in a few pages and concluding with a macabre twist.

Each begins with an everyday encounter. Then the ordinary takes an unexpected turn and young readers wonder what will happen next. Warning: "what happens next" is not a "happily ever after." Example: There's a stain on the school cafeteria floor. When a stray dime lands on the spot, the coin instantly vanishes. What happens when something or someone much larger accidentally lands on the stain?

Pay attention to the female characters. The girls are rarely helpless victims. They are often the perpetrators of some  horrifying stuff. They can deliver their own forms of justice. Lesson: Don't mess with a smart girl!

Sarah J. Coleman's full-page eerie black ink drawings and a glow-in-the-dark cover complete the package. 

Librarians would do well to order several copies of these middle-grade tales of terror. Satisfy young appetites for horror-lite with these creeptastic tales.

If I had a dollar for every time a student asked for a scary book, I could own a pair of Jimmy Choos. Let's face it: kids love creepy, spine tingling stories. Over time, this genre has consistently retained its appeal. R.L. Stein never goes out of style. Gaiman's Coraline, Black's Doll Bones, Baptist's The Jumbies, and Oppel's The Nest deliver contemporary horror to legions of young audiences.
Now, a dynamic writing duo has tapped into middle grade fascination with horror. Ally Condie and Brendan Reichs invite kids to explore The Darkdeep.

What if your worst nightmare came to life? What if the object of your childhood fears attacked you? What if a group of friends discovered that the terrifying figments of their collective imaginations took form?

Twelve -year-old explorers Nico, Taylor, Emma, and Opal discover a mysterious island hidden beneath massive cliffs. A strange-looking houseboat is moored on the island’s pond. Filled with a collection of the bizarre, this floating oddity feels like a “psychopath’s attic.” But even more intriguing is a swirling pool of black liquid at the bottom of the houseboat.

Coming to a city near you.... The Darkdeep launches a ten city tour, beginning October 1, 2018. 

One lucky person's  will appear in next The Darkdeep book. Check out this offer to have a character named after you in the sequel.

Susan Cooper has worked her magic again. Yes, the Boggart is back and this time he's bringing reinforcements, including Cousin Nessie of the Loch Ness. Boggarts are "Very ancient creatures, of the Wild Magic...They are shape-shifters, they can become anything they chose." The two, along with siblings Allie and Jay, find themselves at odds with William Trout, a real estate developer who plans to turn Castle Keep, the family's ancestral home, into a resort complex. He has already purchased much of the property. Bulldozers have commenced tearing down existing forests surrounding the castle.
To thwart his plan, the kids and monsters begin scheming. When ordinary pranks such as dumping a bulldozer into the Loch fail to stop Trout, it is time to call upon Scotland's mythological creatures to save Castle Keep. Note: The premise of a real estate magnate, declaring that the project will "be a huge success, huge...bringing hundreds of jobs...I'm a very smart businessman..." may sound familiar to today's readers.

A highland banshee. In this tale she is a small old woman in a green gown, found at the base of a waterfall.

A shape-shifting water horse who kills and then devours humans.

Denizens of the Western Isles, possessing blue hair and long blue beards. They prey on passing ships and are responsible for fierce storms.

Aileen Leijten has created something so original and fresh that I can't stop marveling over the wonder of Lint Boy. How in the world did she ever come up with the idea? 
A collection of lint located in the clothes dryer is fashioned by heat and motion into a tiny boy doll.  Like Pinocchio, this inanimate object becomes real. Soon a companion emerges, another mass of lint, shaped into a friendly bear, aptly named Lint Bear.
Up to this point, everything seems rosy and charming. I was expecting some simple little story about friendship and being true to oneself.
Not so.   There is evil lurking within the pages of this graphic novel. Mrs. PinchnSqueeze is a deranged old hag who has an obsessive compulsion to perform Frankenstein-esque measures on dolls.  She keeps the captured dolls in cages and practices her own form of bizarre surgery and mutilation on the once cuddly toys.  This woman is so vile that "even moths shrivel up when she looked at them." ​

Here is the lint from a load of heavy white bath mats.  I think I can see Lint Boy potential here. 

Time to raid my button box. Every time I open this tin of assorted buttons, I find treasure. 

Now to rummage through my bag of felt scraps. I like to make my own felt and this texture seemed to fit for Lint Boy.

Coraline 
​by Neil Gaiman

Coraline: Graphic Novel
by Neil Gaiman
adapted by 

Doll Bones
​by Holly Black

Cue the music. "You are about to enter Rod Serling's Twilight Zone
​

Meet Addison Merritt, resident of the Spill. Three years ago her town became a no man's land for reasons that are not clear: Maybe a nano outbreak at the local nuclear power plant? Possibly some leakage from another world? Who knows? Addie lives with the remnants of that horrific night. Her parents are gone and her little sister Lexa is now mute.
Gruesome meat puppets, rats, mealy worms, and some type of otherworldly monster now inhabit the town. Addison makes her living by slipping past guards to take striking photos of the Spill. Later she discovers that someone is willing to pay her an obscene amount of money to return to the hospital, located in the Spill sector where her parents died. She need only return to the Spill one last time. However her "one time only" unleashes the wrath of a mutant monster of terrifying proportions.

Westerfeld's narrative includes connections to current events, giving the tale an additional chilling brush with the reader's present reality. Consider: the threat of nuclear destruction "don't mess with the zone’s little projects,' construction of a wall "sooner or later they'll put up a real wall." and ties to North Korea "they know things we don't."