A Nightmare's Dozen: Stories from the Dark [Hardcover]

Michael Stearns (Editor), Michael Hussar (Illustrator)

Book Description

Age Level: 10 and up | Grade Level: 4 and up

Behold fourteen nightmares, in which readers can-if they dare-visit an amusement park where parents bring unwanted offspring; redeem a ticket for a never-ending plane ride; or join the ghosts of dead children at a midnight playground. “Given the recent craze for anything hor-rific, this book is sure to be a hit, and ideal for classroom read-alouds or booktalks.”-School Library Journal

Editorial Reviews

From School Library Journal

Grade 7-9-This collection of 14 original psychological horror tales is short on the gory stuff, but long on the terrors of adolescence and family life. From ghostly alcoholic fathers killed in drunk-driving accidents to obnoxious siblings who are conveniently made to disappear in amusement parks, these stories will please those readers ready for more sophisticated material. Many of the selections have a science-fiction/fantasy bent to them and read like updated episodes of The Twilight Zone. A few also contain vague sexual overtones. Given the recent craze for anything horrific, this book is sure to be a hit, and ideal for classroom read-alouds or booktalks. Some of the contributors, such as Vivian Vande Velde and Bruce Coville, are better known than others, but they have all turned in good performances here.
Carrie Schadle, New York Public Library
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Gr. 6^-9. You can never have enough bizarre, nightmarish stories to suit some readers, but when the tales are as well written as these, you certainly don't need an excuse to buy them. This companion to A Starfarer's Dozen (1995) and A Wizard's Dozen (1993) features original works by noted young-adult authors skilled at creating stories that "allow us to try scarier worlds on for size ... to consider the inconsiderable, the things we can't talk about in polite company." You won't find splatterpunk slash and gore here; just the heart-pounding, truly strange stuff of nightmares, with each tale more bizarre than the last. The stories are consistently good, but Bruce Coville's "The Japanese Mirror," Martha Soukup's "Alita in the Air," and Jane Yolen's "Bolundeers" are especially weird. Michael Hussar's eerie drawings are perfect "decorations" for this peculiarly satisfying collection. Chris Sherman

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Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 10 and up
  
• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Harcourt Children's Books; 1st edition (October 1, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0152012478
• ISBN-13: 978-0152012472
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.6 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,303,692 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars A Nightmare's Dozen, September 18, 2006

A Kid's Review

This review is from: A Nightmare's Dozen: Stories from the Dark (Hello Reader! (DO NOT USE, please choose level and binding)) (Mass Market Paperback)

A NIGHTMARE'S DOZEN
Stories from the dark

Author: Michael Stearns
Genre: Scary stories
Summary:

In this book is a frightening world where mistakes don't come with second chances. Wish with freed in your heart and it can cost you your life, a year at a time. Bratty little brothers are taken away...forever. Disobedient students are quickly straightened out with a private horror show that lasts long after class is over. In this world, no playground, garden, or forest is what it seems. Nowhere, is safe. These events could happen at any time, to anyone-even you!!! In less enlightened times. Nightmares were believed to be evil spirits that attacked a person in their sleep, perching on their chest till they awoke to find nothing in their room but the dark and their own fear.
Modern thinker now tell us that nightmares are caused by much more ordinary things: belated shock from some fright during the day, a reaction to a spicy dinner, anxiety over a spelling test. In our nightmares, our brains play out possibilities that our waking minds won't allow. We feel at last the delayed terrors of the close call earlier in the day, or we experience beforehand the fears that accompany some task we dread, or we discover something about ourselves that our waking minds are too cowardly to consider in the nervous light of day. Nightmares are a release valve, a place to make dry runs, a place to fail spectacularly. They are a place to exorcise demons. And all they cost is a little is a little sleep.
It I the same with scary stories. Like bad dreams, they con be release mechanisms.
Some critics think scary stories are bed for readers, that they indulge dark urges and encourage the worst in us. These critics point to the troubles of our time s and blame them on the horrors in the stories we tell ourselves.