Customer Reviews

Alfred Hitchcock's Monster Museum: Twelve Shuddery Stories for Daring Young Readers

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Alfred Hitchcock (ed.), Alfred Hitchcock's Monster Museum (Random House, 1965)

Back before most of you were born, Alfred Hitchcock was not only a film director. Not at all. He had a rather successful television series, The Alfred Hitchcock Hour; he appeared as a character in the Three Investigators series of novels, written (well, the first eleven of them, anyway) by his friend Robert Arthur; and he edited a series of short story collections for younger readers (also, in fact, ghost-edited by Arthur). All of this has fallen quite a ways into the background now, with Hitch being remembered primarily as the director of a large number of classic films. But all of them are well worth rediscovering, both for nostalgia buffs old enough to remember it all and a new generation of younger readers looking for something more challenging than the standard pre-YA fare available these days.

Alfred Hitchcock's Monster Museum is certainly that. The majority of these stories were originally penned for adult readers, though the reading level of the collection would be solidly termed "young adult" these days. I first read this book at the age of eight or nine, and would encourage parents whose kids show an interest in monsters, pre-teen horror novels, etc., to challenge them with this. You're likely to find yourself answering a number of questions about slightly dated language (after all, while the book was compiled in 1965, some of the stories therein were originally published decades earlier), and a larger number of questions about words that the average nine-year-old in today's educational system hasn't had a hope of encountering, but the kid will come out the other end head and shoulders above his classmates in reading, vocabulary, and spelling.

The stories themselves, as usual in anthologies, vary somewhat in quality. All of them, however, are notable for having images that will haunt the reader well into adulthood (I originally picked the book up again because I wanted to re-read Joseph Payne Brennan's "Slime," which while a somewhat trite and predictable tale, is definitely an imprinter, and discovered that I remembered lines, and sometimes whole scenes, from other stories, the names of the authors of which at the time meant nothing to me-- Stephen Vincent Benet, Ray Bradbury, and Manly Wade Wellman are just some of the names I was startled to discover I'd been reading as a pre-teen), and nothing convinces a kid to read like throwing a good scare into him every now and again. The book has a definite wide range of things to scare the tykes, from mutant flying alligators to primordial living ooze to the common housecat dressed up in a tie and tails, so your kid's bound to find something in here that works. Definitely worth it. It may even wean them off Christopher Pike and R. L. Stine.

I read this back in 2004 as an eigth grader and have not seen it elsewhere since, so forgive my shady memory of this book.
This collection is not perfect--there were a few stories here that were either unoriginal or just downright uninvolving, such as "The Young One", which was a rather cliched (though far from terrible) werewolf story, and "Henry Martindale, Great Dane", a story about a man who mysteriously transforms into a dog (this idea may have been novel and cute when the short was first published, today it's been done to death). There were some great works here though: "Slime", by Joseph Payne Brennan is easily the best story in the whole collection, about an ancient blob-like organism that is accidently brought ashore by seismic (sp?) activity and then proceeds to make a meal out of anything in its path--people included. I wonder if this story inspired the 1958 classic monster movie, "The Blob", and it's two remakes?
Another one I loved, that unfortunately I have a hard time remembering, was "Day of the Dragon", about a scientist who's experiments on alligators lead to a horrifying discovery that threatens to end mandkind. Another story, perhaps the most original of them all, was "The Microscopic Giants", a story about a race of tiny beings evolved to live in the arteries of the earth, who happen to have some pretty scary technology at their disposal.
I'm afraid I don't remember the other stories, but I most certainly recommend this collection--I'll have to read it again in the future.

Childhood memories are relived as I sit and read these stories once again.
I recommend this book to one and all.

I read this book around 40 years ago and remember the stories being really scary. After reading the book again, the stories don't seem as scary, but they are still well-written and entertaining. Overall, Monster Museum is a good read for people of any age.

Not all of the monster stories in this book are memorable but some really were. I first read this book when I was a teenager and am so grateful for modern technology that allows a way to not only find a copy, but to purchase one, since it no longer seems to be in print.
My very favorite short stories in this really cool compilation are The Young One, Day of the Dragon, and Slime. I noticed another reviewer did not appreciate The Young One as much as I did. Sure, it's about werewolves and werewolves have been done a million times in books and movies, but the sociological twist is an added layer of depth that makes the story a little more unique. Very believable and pretty cool.
Slime really does seem to be the basis of the cult classic "The Blob". I can't wait to research a little more and see if everyone is right about that one. Back then, it was a pretty unique idea for a monster and still today, a fascinating read.
Day of the Dragon reads a bit like one of those old 1950's nuclear age monster movies but what a great imagination the author had. It's simply not a tiring story.
And that can be said of the book. It simply never gets tiring with age. Like all well-written and well-imagined stories, the thrill just continues to live on through the decades. What a great, old-fashioned, and still downright fun way to spend an afternoon- reading really vivid monster stories.