{"id":22893,"date":"2017-09-12T07:30:03","date_gmt":"2017-09-12T11:30:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/?p=22893"},"modified":"2017-09-12T07:30:03","modified_gmt":"2017-09-12T11:30:03","slug":"oh-the-horror","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/?p=22893","title":{"rendered":"Oh, the Horror!"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a>Requests for thriller and horror titles have been creeping steadily upward over the past year, and I realize that\u00a0I’m not up on the best of the recent scariest kids’ books anymore. It’s been several years since horror had a strong fan base among our children and teen readers, but it seems to be coming back.
\nSeveral\u00a0of my go-to’s are still wonderful, from the mild-to-medium-scary John Bellairs series (The House with\u00a0a Clock in its Walls<\/em><\/a>, etc.) to Mary Downing Hahn’s decidedly creepy\u00a0Wait Till Helen Comes<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>to\u00a0Patricia Clapp’s somewhat gothic\u00a0Jane-Emily<\/a>.<\/em>\u00a0I can still point teens toward Lois Duncan’s guilty pleasure, I Know What You Did Last Summer<\/a>, <\/em>and seven-year-olds toward James Howe’s delicious Bunnicula<\/a><\/em>. I know, of course, that R.L. Stine\u00a0continues to\u00a0thrill scare-seeking nine-year-olds, and that Darren Shan is a solid pick for thirteen-year-olds who want some gore with their fright. I will forever hand\u00a0young readers of many ages Ray Bradbury’s mesmerizing\u00a0Something Wicked This Way Comes<\/em><\/a>, and Stephen King is, well, still king.
\nBut I just discovered that Chris Wooding’s riveting The Haunting of Alaizabel Cray<\/em> is out of stock indefinitely, and that sad discovery set me thinking about how long it’s been since I added new titles (beyond bestsellers like Ransom Riggs) to my library of recommendations to kids. So I want to ask you, dear ShelfTalker readers, what recent books for kids and teens have raised the hair on the back of your necks? What are your sure-fire spooky reads?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In search of the best recent sinister stories for kids and teens.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22893","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22893","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=22893"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22893\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22893"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22893"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22893"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}