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Publication Date: August 1, 2009 Publisher: Scholastic Author: · Todd Strasser Grade: B
When I was very young, I was entranced by the genre of the ghost story. I mostly got my fix through comic books -- DC Comics' Tales of the Unexpected, Midnight, the Witching Hour, House of Mystery, and other such garish collections -- but sometimes I'd stay awake in bed until the late hours until I heard the strains of Rod Serling's Night Gallery coming from my parents' bedroom, and then I'd cramp myself into a corner so I could watch the screen through the crack in the door.
Todd Strasser's serves up bite-sized horror for pint-sized readers with his Nighttime: Too Dark to See. This is the kind of book that reminds me of the spirit of those bygone days: mini-adventures with the campout ghost-story twist to each one, pulling from the long-time staples of the genre like the ghost train that still rumbles down the tracks to the derelict hotel that still accepts visitors on rainy nights.
Each story involves kids, and each one has them facing an unexpected turn of events -- most of which are benign, but occasionally you're left wondering of the character's final fate. Will the boy hiding under the bed meet the thing that lives under there? Will the boy who danced with a ghost ever find where the girl disappeared to? And will the kid trapped inside his videogame ever find his way out?
The stories are scary, but they're a very tame sort of scary -- R.L. Stine light, if you can imagine such a thing. Readers older than 12 will want to read these so that they have something to scare the younger kids with, but the books will have a larger appeal to the wide-eyed readership of second- to fourth-graders who should devour the tiny tales of terror with relish.
