Seven strange and ghostly tales (Novel)

Book Description

Redwall fans will love the ghostly side of Brian Jacques!

Filled with humor, adventure, and imagination, these seven short stories go from the lighthearted to the bizarre. From a teenager who drives a museum curator to mummify him for signing Phantom Snake (an anagram of his name) all over his exhibits, to a boy who's dared to visit the tomb of a vampire at midnight only to discover that the vampire boy he meets has a mother who nags just like his own, the eerie and chilling settings and characters will captivate readers.

"Well crafted and smoothly written...While suitable for reading aloud, the tales are even better under the covers with a flashlight." --Booklist, starred review

"Brian Jacques, author of the Redwall books, proves to have a surprising gift for amusing, sometimes horrifying, sometimes quite poignant ghost stories....An excellent choice for reading aloud." --The Horn Book

Customer Reviews:

Strange, but not Ghostly.......2002-01-13

I will admit that I was looking for a book to keep me up all night, but instead I found a slightly eerie, yet funny book about ghosts and vampires.
The best story is "The Fate of Thomas P. Kanne".
Bottom line:
It was good, but I've read scarier.

Brian Jacques, an awesome author.......2000-10-01

This a totally cool book. perfect for campfires. all of these stories are eery, spooky, or hilarious. In my opinion, his other books also rock the house. I've read every one. if you don't buy this, you should check it out of the library and take the time to read it. I especially praise "Jamie and the Vampire". Hillariously funny! I also liked "Thomas P. Kanne". This scared the crap out of me! If you can't get hold of this book then buy it.Definetly your loss if you don't read it.

Bad things happen to bad people.......2000-09-25

Having enjoyed reading the Redwall series of books by the same author, I started this book with high expectations. While the seven stories all have interesting and unexpected twists and an odd sense of humor, I ultimately found the book unsatisfying. The Redwall books are stories about good triumphing over evil. In Seven Strange and Ghostly Tales, the best you could say about the stories is that bad things happen to bad people. The characters are either bad people, or good people who are victimized by the bad people. For this reason, I found it hard to relate to any of the characters. And unlike Jacques' other books, there are no heroic figures fighting on the side of good. If this book is meant to help instill positive values in younger readers, it would be by frightening them with supernatural consequences of being bad, rather than providing positive role models.

More interesting than scary.......1999-09-25

If you're looking for something to keep you awake all night in fright, look elsewhere. This is not a shock and scream book. However, if you're looking for suspenseful stories that are well-written, thought provoking, and can double as cautionary tales, this is the collection for you. The poetry before each story and the word play within in are good enough to merit special note. This is a book people of any age can enjoy.

B.J.'s Ghost stories are a hidden gem.......1998-02-07

Brian Jacques is best known for his Redwall series, but surprisingly enough, Seven Strange and Ghostly Tales is an undescovered gem. This book is intended for kids 9-14, but unlike Goosebumps or other stories for the age range, this book has rich writing bursting with original ideas. Take, for example, a story where a boy fools the Devil himself. Read this book, you won't be dissapointed

Spooky California: Tales of Hauntings, Strange Happenings, and Other Local Lore (Spooky)

Average customer rating:

Good stories, but most are re-tells of the same old California Hauntings!
Wonderfully Spooky!
California folklore

Spooky California: Tales of Hauntings, Strange Happenings, and Other Local Lore (Spooky)
S. E. Schlosser
Manufacturer: Globe Pequot
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | New Age | Religion & Spirituality | Subjects | Books

Supernatural | Occult | Religion & Spirituality | Subjects | Books
Similar Items:

ASIN: 0762738448

Book Description

California's folklore is kept alive in these expert retellings by master storyteller S. E. Scholosser, and in artist Paul Hoffman's evocative illustrations.

Customer Reviews:

Good stories, but most are re-tells of the same old California Hauntings!.......2007-09-24

Not too many that are original. Many are re-told popular stories that are told in so many books. WOrth a read, if you don't already own lots of Cal. haunting books (which I do) but not worth it if you already have anextensive collection.

Wonderfully Spooky!.......2005-10-20

Another great read from S.E. Schlosser. There is quite a mix of stories in this collection. My favorite was a scary ghost story called "Vengeance" (from San Francisco), in which a Japanese woman named Ishi is murdered by her husband and her ghost returns to torment him.

There is also a really funny story about Bigfoot, a sad and haunting tale about a little girl from San Diego called "The Bells", and a spine-chilling story that takes place in the Sierra Nevada called "The Corpse Walker" (I'd tell you about it, but I don't want to spoil the story for potential readers.)

Oh -- I almost forgot to mention Jake and his camels! Jake is a miner who buys three ornery camels named Shadrach, Meshack and Abednego to help him work his claim. The camels take an unholy delight in tormenting everyone around them, especially Jake, who has a blind spot regarding them and thinks they are wonderful. Then Jake discovers a wealthy new vein of gold and is murdered before he can stake his new claim.

A great book!

California folklore.......2005-09-06

I enjoyed reading the 30 folklore stories very much. I especially appreciated the story called Tommy Knocker's, a story about hard rock gold mining. I also liked reading about Tisayac in the story titled The Guardian, a story about Yosemite National Park. There are 2 wonderful stories about ghost, gold mining, called The Spook of Misery Hill and Jake's Camels. I also enjoyed reading the Ghost Ship, a story about the Mojave Desert. S E Schlosser has done a wonderfull job of assembling and presenting folklore unique to California .

The Painted Wall and Other Strange Tales (Aesop Accolades (Awards))

Average customer rating:

Fairy Tales With A Twist

The Painted Wall and Other Strange Tales (Aesop Accolades (Awards))

Manufacturer: Tundra Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Literature | Children's Books | Subjects | Books

General | Ages 9-12 | Children's Books | Subjects | Books

Book Description

Honor Book for the Society of School Librarians International’s Best Book Award - Language Arts, Grades K-6 Novels

Selected as one of four recipients of the 2004 Aesop Accolade

Selected by the Pennsylvania School Librarians Association as one of the PSLA YA Top Forty Fiction Titles 2003

At about the time the Grimm Brothers were gathering their famous collection of folk stories and fairy tales in Europe, in China a similar collection of almost five hundred stories had just been compiled by the scholar Pu Sing-ling. Drawing on oral and written sources, he called his collection of the strange and wondrous Strange Tales from a Studio of Leisure.

The fruits of his life’s work become immensely popular with storytellers who performed the stories in teahouses, where rapt audiences would sit for half a day drinking tea and listening to tales of ghosts, fox fairies, and other wonders.

Almost unknown in the West, the stories are given new life in this important work by the masterful Michael Bedard.

Customer Reviews:

Fairy Tales With A Twist.......2007-05-29

"The Painted Wall and other strange tales" by Michael Bedard is a collection of Pu Songling's 7th century Chinese folk and fairy tales adapted into short stories for a young adult audience. It's tumbler of Grimm's fairy tales with a twist of "Twilight Zone".

Imagine a painting so beautiful that it could become real. Could you walk into such a landscape and interact with its animals and people? Wouldn't it be nice to use a magic pear tree to teach a greedy merchantman a lesson? Or a pair of glass eyes to teach a naughty boy a lesson about stealing? All of these and more await you in "The Painted Wall and other strange tales".

My first experience with a Pu Songling story was the 1987 film "Chinese Ghost Story" starring Leslie Cheung as an inexperienced tax collector who encounters a beautiful woman, an evil tree demon and a wise old monk. The movie was smart, sexy and packed with stunning action sequences. It was great Hong Kong cinema and a fairly close, although cleverly embellished for the big screen, adaptation of Pu Songling's "The Magic Sword". While that is not one of the stories in this collection, there are 23 others to enjoy in this collection.

Bringing Pu Songling's classic stories to a young adult audience isn't easy, even word for word translations of the stories do not have their original subtleties or nuance. Cultural differences are as unavoidable as they are unexplained. The protagonist of every story is male. The villain of every story is either female or a wealthy person. Bedard does accomplish the goal in spite of all this. What really works about this collection is everything else - the originality of the tales themselves, the compactness of the writing, the diversity of the stories, and the rare opportunity to read tales of this kind.

Strange Happenings: Five Tales of Transformation

Average customer rating:

Strange Indeed...Worth Reading!
Nice kitty
An enchanting collection of stories

Strange Happenings: Five Tales of Transformation
Avi
Manufacturer: Harcourt Children's Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Short Story Collections | Literature | Children's Books | Subjects | Books

General | Literature | Children's Books | Subjects | Books

General | Ages 9-12 | Children's Books | Subjects | Books

Visionary Fiction | Fiction | Religion & Spirituality | Subjects | Books
Similar Items:

ASIN: 0152057900

Book Description

Children become cats and birds, a once-invisible young woman pieces herself back together, and the identity of a mysterious baseball mascot is uncovered--all within this eclectic collection from master storyteller Avi. By turns chilling, ethereal, and surreal, these thought-provoking tales are sure to engage anyone who has ever wondered what it would be like to become someone--or something--else.

Customer Reviews:

Strange Indeed...Worth Reading!.......2006-12-25

This is the kind of book I would have chosen when I was 8-10 years old...all those year ago! Strange Happenings is a collection of five short stores by one author around the central theme of transformation. In this slim tome, the author covers all manner of transformations - we get animal transfiguration with a twist; a girl who creates her own image and discovers perfection is not all it's cracked up to be; the curious boy who gets more than he bargains for when he becomes fixated on finding out just WHO is in that mascot costume; an old-time favorite...the many faces of Ol' Scratch himself and what human greed can make us do for no real reason; and lastly, the Story of Simon who demanded the best...who above all else prized wealth and image and who discovers that getting what you want doesn't always mean getting what you want!

Overall the theme is well illustrated in the selection of stories; they are both simple but most have a "gotcha" twist at the end that has become standard for this type of story. Strange Happenings is not really a horror book, not is it wholly sci-fi...the author's style is reminiscent of Ray Bradbury (where there is always a moral to the story, even if it is somewhat ambiguous) but the stories themselves are subtler. My favorites here were Bored Tom (the transforming Cats) and Babbette the Beautiful. My least favorite was The Shoemaker and Old Scratch which was the least interesting and most drawn out of the stories (I felt). That said, none of the stories was bad and all of them were well written! I enjoyed reading these five tales and quick reading it was. This would make for find classroom discussion around a central theme...each story is simple yet engaging and all of them can lead to relevant discussion of self image and motivations. I can see this being entertaining AND food for thought! I'd recommend this highly to young readers (ages 8-12, with 8-10 being ideal) who've transitioned fully to chapter books but still need relatively simple plots that are both SIMPLE and INTERESTING!

Nice kitty.......2006-07-16

Cats haven't been considered really and truly evil for centuries now, but try telling that to Avi in his latest collection of short stories. Cats? They're friends with the devil himself. They'll transform bodies with you and then leave you stuck as a feline for the rest of your days. In "Strange Happenings: Five Tales of Transformation", Avi gives up the world of historical fiction and kid adventures to bring us some fantasy and sci-fi tales that come across as low-key Ray Bradbury. Not quite as chilling, of course. Let's just consider them starter-Bradbury fare. They're not always moral tales and not always agreeable, but they've the advantage of always being interesting and always containing just a hint of darkness to their souls. Whether he's channeling fables or Rod Serling, Avi's book is for those kids who want tales of magic rather than scary fare. These stories are warnings. Not frightenings.

The first tale, "Bored Tom" (which sounds like a character from Struwwelpeter) is the first of these transformative tales. Tom's bored as all get out. He's like Maurice Sendak's Pierre, feeling that life has nothing new to offer him. That is, until one day a cat comes to him with a particularly interesting proposition. Story number two is "Babette the Beautiful". In it, a queen wishes for a daughter of complete and utter perfection. She gets her wish, but it's the daughter that has to pay the price. Story number three was "Curious" about a boy's search to discover who's really inside the local baseball mascot's costume. Curiosity kills the cat in this one. Rounding out the book are Avi's attempts at creating new fables. "The Shoemaker and Old Scratch", involves a man, a cat, and the devil himself as one character attempts to outwit the other. Finally there's "Simon", about a man who wanted everyone in the world to take notice of him and the consequences of when they do.

The connecting thread between these tales is that in each one someone, or some thing, changes from one physical appearance to another. Transformation, both internally and externally, as it were. Because of its particularly pretty cover art, the book is bound to attract a whole host of enthusiastic child readers. The question is, how strong a book is this? It's always difficult to review collections of short stories, especially for children, since you're judging the author on scant little glimpses of interesting tales. What it comes down to is whether or not the author adapts just as well to the short format as he or she does to the longer. In Avi's case, it's kind of touch and go. He's certainly won the reader over in terms of interest. Every tale is an interesting one, even those of a moralistic bent. So how well do they stick with you in the long run? Will the kid that reads these stories be thinking of them long afterwards or will they immediately forget them? The answer is both. I think the fables, like "Simon" and the "Old Scratch" tale, are forgettable. They're fine as stories go, but they don't stick too tightly in the brain. The slightly horrific "Curious", will be more memorable for some kids than others. And personally, I think the first two stories in this collection are the strongest, and come across as the most affecting.

Once in a great while a teacher will tell his or her class to locate a book of short stories and report on them in some fashion. In other cases, kids are told to find a book of short stories and act one of the tales out like a play. There are a million different uses for a book of this type, and for their purposes, "Strange Happenings", will be an ideal choice. I don't think that it's the best of Avi's work or even the best collection of short stories for kids by a single author, but it's definitely a lot of fun. Well worth picking up if you get a chance.

An enchanting collection of stories.......2006-06-01

Be afraid. Be very afraid. Because many strange things happen in the five stories in this book.

Tom is so bored he wishes he could sleep all day like his cat Charlie. Suddenly, this unusual feline starts talking to Tom and asks if he really would like to be a cat. Tom thinks he would, so Charlie takes him to a deserted building filled with cats. They are granted an audience with the wizard cat, who transforms Tom into Charlie and vice versa. For Tom, however, the experience isn't quite what he expected it to be; after a few weeks he's even more bored as a cat and wishes he could return to being a human. There's a small problem though: Charlie likes being a boy and doesn't want to change back. He explains to Tom the difficulty of transforming back into a human and that many of the cats in the deserted building are boys and girls who thought they were bored as well. Does Tom return to being a boy? It's a very strange happening.

And then there's a queen who desperately wants a little girl --- the most flawlessly beautiful girl in the world, to be exact. So she secretly consults a withered, ugly old hag named Esmeralda and proceeds to insult her. Still, Esmeralda grants her wish and soon the queen gives birth to a flawlessly beautiful daughter named Babette the Beautiful. The trouble is, the princess is so flawless that she's invisible! The queen banishes all mirrors from the kingdom and describes to artists how to draw portraits of her daughter. When the queen dies, Babette does not know she's invisible since there are no mirrors. When the princess encounters Esmeralda by chance, Esmeralda tells her the truth. Understandably Babette is astounded and furious, and demands to have a mirror brought to her. She seeks out Esmeralda again and discovers how to become visible. Unfortunately, things don't turn out exactly right, and Babette the Beautiful isn't so beautiful any more.

STRANGE HAPPENINGS is not for the faint-hearted. But for anyone who believes there are more things in heaven and earth that no one can explain, this just may be the book for you. You've been warned!

--- Reviewed by Robert M. Oksner (oksnerinc@attglobal.net)

Classic Starts: The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (Classic Starts Series)

Average customer rating:

Classic Starts: The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (Classic Starts Series)
Robert Louis Stevenson , and Kathleen Olmstead
Manufacturer: Sterling
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Literature | Children's Books | Subjects | Books

General | Ages 9-12 | Children's Books | Subjects | Books

Ages 9-12 | Children's Books | 4-for-3 Books Store | Stores | Books

All 4-for-3 Deals | 4-for-3 Books Store | Stores | Books
Similar Items:

ASIN: 1402726678

Book Description

A single person—but with two personalities: one that’s noble and kind and another that’s pure, repulsive evil. Robert Louis Stevenson’s engrossing masterpiece about the dual nature of man—and a good doctor whose thirst for knowledge has tragic consequences—serves up all the suspense and satisfying chills one expects from the best horror and science fiction.

Average customer rating:

It's accelerating!
SPOOKY,AND IT`S ABOUT KIDS.

Spooky Kids: Strange but True Tales
Bruce M. Nash , and Allan Zullo
Manufacturer: Watermill Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Ages 9-12 | Children's Books | Subjects | Books

Mystery & Wonders | Science, Nature & How It Works | Children's Books | Subjects | Books

General | Issues | Children's Books | Subjects | Books

Curiosities & Wonders | Fun Facts | Reference | Subjects | Books
Similar Items:

ASIN: 081673447X

Customer Reviews:

It's accelerating!.......1998-04-25

spooky kids is spookier than R.L Stine's GOOSEBUMPS. It is sadly true; but scary! Siskel and Ebert gave it 1,000 thumbs up. It makes Goosebumps look like snail!!!!!

SPOOKY,AND IT`S ABOUT KIDS........1997-01-18

My teacher reads these to us all the time,and they`re great. What makes it even better is because it`s about kids. Totally creepy, and intereresting if nothing else.That is if your into that supernatural sort of thing like me

Average customer rating:

Strange And Spooky Stories
Andrew Fusek Peters
Manufacturer: Millbrook Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Library Binding

General | Computers | Children's Books | Subjects | Books

General | Ages 9-12 | Children's Books | Subjects | Books

Folklore & Mythology | Social Sciences | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0761303219

Hearsay: Strange Tales from the Middle Kingdom

Average customer rating:

Not Middle Earth

Hearsay: Strange Tales from the Middle Kingdom
Barbara Ann Porte
Manufacturer: Greenwillow Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Short Story Collections | Literature | Children's Books | Subjects | Books

General | Ages 9-12 | Children's Books | Subjects | Books

Anthologies | Short Stories | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Book Description

Open this book, and the Far East is closer than you think. Here are fifteen traditional tales that embrace the folklore and culture of China. Some are based on tales as ancient as China itself, and some are newly spun. But all are intriguing in theirportrayal of everything from royal dynasties and sorcerers to peddlers and bandits. Readers of all ages will be enticed into a world of pageantry and enchantment.

Customer Reviews:

Not Middle Earth.......2002-06-03

Although Barbara Ann Porte has never been to China, years of research enabled her to successfully distill in these 15 tales some of its ancient essences.

This, she explains in the introduction, allowed her to move back in time to the era of emperors and empresses, court magicians, imperial concubines, and common people who raised crops, kept shops, peddled wares, fought wars and paid taxes. She traveled back across centuries, beyond the Silk Route, to places Marco Polo never mentioned. She ýcrossed paths with foxes and ghosts, trained eels and dragons, musicians and jugglers, young lovers and bandits,ý ý traveling as they did, ýon foot and by taxi, by river sampan, sedan chair, and camel caravan.ý Sometimes, she hobbled on feet that were bound. And her one aim, she writes, was ýfor the pleasure of the stories.ý

The stories are quite unusual. Some are silly, including the ýTwo-Parasol Person,ý which tells of a woman who always carried two parasols because her mother told her to do it.

Others are fanciful. In ýRope Tricks,ý a magician sent his son into the clouds to pick a peach for the emperor, ýA Case Against Nappingý tells of the philosopher Zhuangzi, born in 369 B.C.E., who was once a butterfly. In ýThe Rescue of a Concubine,ý Dayan saved his lover Amina with live eels, which knotted their bodies together and formed a pair of huge stilts he could climb to scale the walls of the concubinesý courtyard. Fireflies lit their way. The captured lovers enchanted their tormentors in ways most exotic and strange.

Aside from the stories themselves, I best like the book's epigraph, an ancient Chinese saying: "There is a time for frowning and a time for laughing. In either case, it is a serious matter." Alyssa A. Lappen

Average customer rating:

Great!

PHONE CALL FROM A GHOST

i liked this book

Phone Call from a Ghost: Strange Tales from Modern America
Daniel Cohen
Manufacturer: Tandem Library
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Curiosities & Wonders | Fun Facts | Reference | Subjects | Books
Mystery & Wonders | Science, Nature & How It Works | Children's Books | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0613872657

Customer Reviews:

Great!.......2001-11-30

I loved this book! I am a true horror movie/book fan. This was a great book and I recommend it to all like me. I purchased this book when I was in the 4th grade and I graduated high school this past year. I still love reading my book!

PHONE CALL FROM A GHOST.......2000-10-26

This book is so great. I have read it so many times because I think these kinds of things are cool. My fave story in this book was the one about the Hermit, it was amazing, but I believe it. If you like this book, and this sort of stuff, I think you should also read "CIVAL WAR GHOSTS" it's also a good book.

i liked this book.......2000-09-22

this was a good book.i read it 3 times.

Average customer rating:

Strange Irish Tales for Children
Edmund Lenihan
Manufacturer: Mercier Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Literature | Children's Books | Subjects | Books

General | Ages 4-8 | Children's Books | Subjects | Books

General | Ages 9-12 | Children's Books | Subjects | Books

Books:

Books Index

Books Home

Recommended Books