Product Description

What is real and what is imaginary? Do evil creatures lurk in the shadows? Do demons attack the helpless? Are there such things as invisible men? For generations, storytellers have given substance to our worst fears. In Ask the Bones, master storytellers Arielle North Olson and Howard Schwartz retell a varied selection of the world's most frightening folktales. Be warned-these stories could scare you to death!

Illustrated by David Linn.

"These twenty-two stories provide a wide variety of supernatural happenings that won't disappoint the young horror acolyte." (The Horn Book, starred review)

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #54573 in Books
• Published on: 2002-08-26
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 160 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780142301401
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

From Publishers Weekly
Readers looking to be scared (but not too scared) will find chills aplenty in this collection of 22 smoothly told folktales from many cultures. The volume opens with several stories in which protagonists (almost always male) witness supernatural horrors?a Japanese student's drawings of cats save him from a ravaging goblin rat; a Charleston boy's employer is meted out gruesome but just deserts after imprisoning a mermaid in a bottle. The tone darkens as the volume progresses, with the innocent as well as the guilty coming to grisly ends. Picture book author Olson (Hurry Home, Grandma!) and folklorist Schwartz (Next Year in Jerusalem) don't exploit the blood and gore of the horror genre; their stories usually end just before the carnage begins, leaving readers with a thrill of horribly delicious anticipation. Rather than striving to impart the different flavors of their original sources, the authors favor a deceptively casual voice throughout, one that would lend itself to a storytelling session around a campfire or after lights out. Final artwork not seen by PW. Ages 8-12.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From School Library Journal
Grade 4-7-A collection of 22 stories, 6 from the United States, and others from Russia, Persia, Mexico, Germany, Iceland, England, Uzbekistan, and Spain, among other places. The retellings are spare, with little description, explanation, or enhancement to the "bare bones" of the tales. Although the selections do not read aloud well, there is the potential for storytellers to create more tellable versions by embellishing upon them with their own style. The strength of this book is in the tales included. Many are hard to find in print, especially for this age group. Source notes appear at the end. The black-and-white charcoal drawings scattered throughout do little to add to the mood of the text. This title will not have the appeal of Alvin Schwartz's "Scary Stories" books (HarperCollins). However, if your scary-story readers have exhausted your current titles, you may want to consider this one.
Molly S. Kinney, Office of Public Library Services, Atlanta, GA
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
Gr 5^-9. This varied collection of scary tales includes 22 stories from around the world, ranging from ghost stories to tales about witches and voodoo spells. In most of the selections good triumphs over evil. The title piece tells of young Yusef's outwitting his evil employer who has left his workers to starve to death atop a mountain. Other tales feature merchants, servants, travelers, pirates, and even a young boy studying for his bar mitzvah. More haunting than the stories themselves are David Linn's bone-chilling black-and-white illustrations, which will stay with the reader long after the book is closed. Excellent for reading aloud, this collection will satisfy even jaded genre fans. Sources are included. Helen Rosenberg

Customer Reviews

The scariest stories that kids read
I think this book is good for kids that can handle very scary stories. If you do not like to read scary stories, do not read this book at all. I think that the grownups would like the story called, "The Handkerchief." I think grownups would like it because it is very scary, and I think that's what you grownups like. I think this book is appropriate for 7 to 13 year olds. I think that because I have just begun to read it this year, and I'm sure I would have liked it last year. I'm eight right now. Even though you may be older than 13, you may still like this book. The book is pretty scary. A lot of kids fight over this book at school because they think it is the greatest.

Kinda Boring
My school librarian read us stories from this book in library time. I didn't really like it, it was kind of boring. I like the scary stories series from Alvin Schwartz. There were only like two or three stories in this book that I remotly liked, but other than that, these books are a bit flat. I don't reccomend this book.That is really all I have to say about that.
P.S. The Scary Story series are awesome!!

Kids will scare themselves silly with these horror stories
If you're heading to camp this summer, this might be the perfect book to read before you go. It's not a handbook or manual on survival, rather it's a compilation of 22 scary folktales to tell around the fire or during a late-night gabfest in the cabin.

Between these pages you'll encounter ghosts, witches, demons, evil eyes, giants, monsters, talking heads and other beasties from near and far, Japan to Iceland, Eastern Europe to Mexico. The sources for the tales are listed at the back of the book. Many of them come from respected regional and national archives.

Even so, the stories vary in their effectiveness and "scare factor." Some don't rise much above the level of urban legends passed around on the Internet. Others, like the title story, are true folk tales, with obvious staying power.

The stories are short, just five-six pages each. Several of them are illustrated with pencil drawings, which are moody, if not exactly scary.

Older elementary and middle school students will get a kick out of scaring themselves silly with these horror stories.