Publisher’s summary: A game of hide-and-seek goes on far too long…

A look-alike doll makes itself right at home…

A school talent-show act leaves the audience aghast…

And a summer at camp takes a turn for the braaaains…

This collection of all-new spooky stories is sure to keep readers up past their bedtimes, looking over their shoulders to see what goes bump in the night.

So if you’re feeling brave, turn the page.

🎃

Children’s horror stories have long been some of my favorite things to read. I have the utmost respect for the genre, knowing full well the extraordinary exploits and fearless feats particularly adroit authors can pull off within it. Trusting their tenacious, indefatigable audience, these are books that often go places those written for older audiences seldom dream of going. 

And yet, knowing all this, I still somehow end up underestimating them. A force of habit stemming, I’m sure, from the fact that for so much of my childhood my only contact with the genre was with the sundry of spooky kid shows that were so prevalent in the nineties. As excellent and formative as some of these programs were, they tended, as a necessity, to leave a lot to the imagination — to suggest rather than show. I suppose that’s what I’ve subconsciously come to expect from any middle grade horror affair now: sinister shadows and understated, unsettling scenarios. And then I read about a girl getting her eyes pecked out by a sadistic crow.

Which is exactly the sort of wake-up call you find in Anica Mrose Rissi’s Hide and Don’t Seek, a collection in the same vein as Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, where, in lieu of character growth and empathetic engagement, we get a series of shuddersome setpieces sure to mess with even the most morbid of middle school minds. It’s a very, very effective selection and I enjoyed it a great deal. Rissi’s writing is sharp, shrewd, and succinct — perfectly suited for flash fiction of the creepy persuasion. I also appreciated how often Rissi played with form, with a handful of stories written in various styles and structures, from a series of letters to text messages to an entire story written like a playscript. It’s all very fun and whimsical.

Highlights: 

• “Beatrice,” a truly unsettling creepy doll story.
• “Truly Delicious,” a camp story written as a series of letters home from a young boy — which turns out to be an affecting way to tell a zombie story.
• “The Girl and the Crow,” where the aforementioned eye scream event takes place.
•  “Two Wishes,” a delightfully morbid Twilight Zone-like tale, complete with cruel twist ending.

The stories are accompanied by eerie and atmospheric illustrations by artist Carolina T. Modina, and they help a lot in terms of mood-setting. In some instances the drawing is considerably creepier than the story itself, even.

All in all, a great collection to pick up on this Hallowe’en season.