I've been contemplating buying this off Amazon for a while now. I kept going back and forth, telling myself it's ridiculous to buy a children's book at this point in my life and then arguing that I used to borrow it from the library all the time when I was younger, which makes it a vital part of my childhood and worth owning.
The Scary Book is a compilation of short stories, jokes, poems and games that you can play on Halloween. Or any time you're having a sleepover, really. If you're the type of kid I was. (You know, the type who enjoyed being scared and scaring others.)
This is aimed at young children, but there's a story in here called Taily-po. I never, ever forgot this story. I had read a different version in another scary story compilation (I wish I could remember the name of it) and it terrified me. The ending wasn't quite as tame as it is in The Scary Book. If you haven't heard the story before, you can read it here:http://www.ghostsandstories.com/tailypo.html
Aside from this book, I also used to borrow all the Scary Stories to Tell In the Dark books from the library. Some of those stories were actually frightening and stick with me even now. Like the one about the two children who behaved badly because they were promised a drum if they did, but their mother got fed up and left, leaving them with a mother who had a wooden tail.
What I remember most from those books are the illustrations. They were incredibly effective. I always remembered one of them. I don't know what the story was that it went along with, only that I had trouble sleeping at night after looking at it. Looking at it now, I have no idea why it bothered me so much.
Maybe it's because its body is so distorted, or I was afraid to wake up in the middle of the night and see it in my bedroom. I really have no idea.
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