Summer 2009 Reading Spectacular #5

Uncle Montague’s Tales of Terror by Chris Priestly is a charmingly gothic series of spooky tales for kids housed within the framework of a story. It hits quite nicely that level of “fun to be creeped out” for kids that Coraline rides on. As a series of shorter stories, of course, none of them are as developed as Neil Gaiman’s novella, but that’s fine; instead they work as (and indeed are presented as) oral narratives in the vein of campfire ghost stories. Fun, slightly silly, and sure to give the nine-to-eleven set a nice case of chills.