Nonfiction Booktalker: Seriously Scary Stuff

When the young man who is my new neighbor dropped in to use the phone, there, perched upon on my footstool, was Joshua Gee’s Encyclopedia Horrifica: The Terrifying TRUTH! about Vampires, Ghosts, Monsters, and More (Scholastic, 2007). The book has a compelling cover and lots of illustrations, including “actual” photos of ghosts, photos of the giant squid which may have been the basis of the legend of the kraken (a horrible, huge sea monster of myth and legend), and a portrait of a man with the rare disease Hypertrichosis universalis (translation: “hair everywhere”). You guessed it: his ailment makes him look like a werewolf! There are also images of creatures of which I wish I was still ignorant—such as the eyelash mite. The very look of the book is hugely appealing to kids.

And my neighbor? As he departed, he looked at me intensely, saying, “I just have to ask! You have all these neat books and music, but Encyclopedia Horrifica?” I told him that I talk and write about nonfiction for kids. Now he wants to borrow the book!

Sometimes, it seems, you can judge a book by its cover. At least enough to know that you want to read it. So, if your kids like Encyclopedia Horrifica, they will almost certainly enjoy Jeff Szpirglas’s Fear This Book: Your Guide to Fright, Horror, and Things That Go Bump in the Night (Maple Tree, 2006). Szpirglas is a veritable expert at goose bumps. Watching Jaws 2, he confides, was a seminal event in his youth. For years after, he feared open water, convinced that a shark would chomp him.

What about you and your booktalk listeners? What do you fear? Spiders? Roller coasters? The number 13? Szpirglas is adept at identifying phobias, and at overcoming them. He provides some great advice, for instance, about roller coasters, along with tips on how to face other fears. He ought to know, since he now says he loves the water and no longer is bothered by imaginary sharks.

In They Did What? Your Guide to Weird & Wacky Things People Do (Maple Tree, 2005), Szpirglas is at it again, reporting on crazy fads that folks have followed over the years, including swallowing live goldfish (one guy from Indiana claims to have swallowed 5,000!). The author shares more gruesome goodies, too. He tells us that the ancient Romans, in an early instance of recycling, used their own urine to clean clothes. And, thanks to Szpirglas, you can now tell your readers about bird diapers, turkey-and-gravy soda, and the daredevils who have gone over Niagara Falls in a barrel or climbed up the sides of skyscrapers. Remember the famous urban legend about the Mexican pet—a “Chihuahua” that was actually a rat? Szpirglas recounts it in icky detail.

For more modern folklore, turn to John Townsend’s appealing series from Raintree, a good companion to the Szpirglas books. In Mysterious Urban Myths (2004), Townsend tells us how urban legends start (typically by way of “a friend of a cousin of a coworker”). We never do find out who experienced the original event, tipping us off to the fact that most urban legends are just that—good stories, but not the truth.

Except for sometimes. Townsend’s book is terrific because among the phony urban legends he intersperses some true ones. Listen to these: in 2000, when a woman brought home a fried chicken dinner for her family, one of the pieces looked odd. Turns out, it was a chicken head, complete with eyes and beak, all deliciously deep-fried! Another “legend”? In Norway, in 1932, a four-year-old girl was snatched by a huge sea eagle, and carried to its cliff home over a mile away. Unbelievably, she survived. Finally, there’s this: a lawyer in a Toronto skyscraper pushed firmly against a window to demonstrate to some students how tough the glass was. It wasn’t. He fell 24 stories to his death.

Would my new neighbor like to borrow these books, too? You bet! And so, I warrant, would your fourth- to eighth-grade booktalk audiences.