Home
  • Home
  • Latest Issue
  • Past Issues
  • Authors & Artists
  • Articles
  • Reviews
  • News
  • Forums
  • Search

Classic Ghost Stories; Ghostly Haunts

  • View
  • Rearrange

Digital version – browse, print or download

Books for Keeps is packed with articles, interviews comment and, of course, reviews.

You can read the whole issue online here, for free!

How to print the digital edition of Books for Keeps: click on this PDF file link - click on the printer icon in the top right of the screen to print.

BfK Newsletter

Receive the latest news & reviews direct to your inbox!

BfK No. 97 - March 1996

Cover Story
The March cover of BfK features Dilly the Dinosaur who is 10 years old this year. Her author, Tony Bradman, is the subject of our Authorgraph this month. We are grateful to Reed Books for their help in reproducing this illustration from Susan Hellard's original artwork.

  • PDFPDF
  • Printer-friendly versionPrinter-friendly version
  • Send to friendSend to friend

Classic Ghost Stories

 Molly Cooper
(Lowell House)
978-1565652798, RRP £3.66, Paperback
10-14 Middle/Secondary
Buy "Classic Ghost Stories: v. 1" on Amazon

Ghostly Haunts

 Michael Morpurgo
(HarperCollinsChildren'sBooks)
978-0006751168, RRP £4.99, Paperback
10-14 Middle/Secondary
Buy "Ghostly Haunts" on Amazon

A complementary pair of books well worth selecting from an overcrowded shelf. The first collection is aptly named, gathering tales by O Henry, Bram Stoker, Dickens, Wilde, Kipling and a harrowingly poignant yarn about a vagrant ghost child by New England writer, Mary Wilkins Freeman. These stories lack the gore of much that passes for horror nowadays but they're very much for the older children in this age range, or those with uncommonly strong nerves to match their advanced reading skills. Wilde's 'Canterville Ghost' provides some light relief, but Kipling's 'Phantom Rickshaw', a tale of adultery and infernal retribution, is strictly X Certificate.

The second collection, a fund-raising enterprise to celebrate the centenary of the National Trust, contains the responses of 10 'grown-up children' to a request by the editor to write a ghost story around some Trust property they had visited. The results are very enjoyable, ranging from Ted Hughes' neo-pagan encounter with a vulpine familiar to Dick King-Smith's clever squib about the vengeance of a slaughtered fowl. The best of the bunch is a macabre and jocular gothic by Terence Blacker, suggesting that a diet of blood might be sustaining some of our most venerable institutions.

Reviewer: 
George Hunt
  • About us
  • Contact us
  • Help/FAQ
  • My Account