Kid Horror
Despite the difficulties of a post-Covid Halloween, I have been doing my best to keep in the Halloween spirit as much as I can. It’s been a little hard to focus this year, dealing not only with the missing the expected Halloween parties, events, and even trick-or-treating that we take for granted in a normal year, but the unseasonable, snowy weather, bringing to mind October 31st, 1991 for those of us in the upper Midwest, makes things feel more like December than October.
On a recent remote trivia night, my partner and I encountered some new slang we hadn’t heard before, “spoopy.” I don’t know if we’re just hopelessly out of it or if the trivia host is just a cutting edge type, but we’ve seen the term pop up everywhere lately. According to this 2017 article from the New Statesman, the term has a fairly extensive history as an online word and appears to mean something like “spooky but also funny,” though the trivia host seemed to be using it to refer to “spooky cute.”
I have to admit, it kind of fits my Halloween ethos. Over the years, I’ve been really into Halloween, a great lover of creepy things and ghost stories and even a little delicious dread, but I have also been a bit of a wimp when it comes to things like gore and hideous maimings. As a kid, I loved reading about ghosts, monsters, and other horrifying stuff, even if I would be traumatized for weeks at the sight of blood. I’ve kind of gotten better over the years, in particular after life with my lovingly morbid spouse, but I still really appreciate a good all-ages horror story.
I don’t think I was alone in my childhood of loving Halloween and horror while being a little traumatized by gore. Here is a collection of works that I feel will surely sate the desire for a creepy, seasonal read without leading to sleepless nights. Or at least, those lovely sleepless nights where you get to hide under the covers feeling those exciting chills because you just have to finish another book before morning. Let’s start with some comics and graphic novels!
Spooky, but not too spooky, Over the Garden Wall is a 2014 Cartoon Network miniseries that feels eminently suited to cool fall evenings. I was very impressed by the show when I watched it last year, a complex, dark, whimsical, and funny exploration of adolescence and childhood, fear and hope, nostalgia and change. Hopelessly romantic teenager Wirt and his younger brother Greg are lost in a strange vintage fairy tale land, like something out of a 1920s Halloween postcard, guided by an unreliable bluebird named Beatrice, trying to avoid the sinister Beast and find their way home (wherever or whenever that is). The tone of the series is perfect, a heady mix that could be enjoyed, I feel, in different ways, by people of any age. These companion comics, perhaps to a slightly lesser degree, are the same. I feel that, while they could be enjoyed by someone unfamiliar with the show, they would probably be best enjoyed after having watched the show, delving of course into spoilers (and why wouldn’t you have watched them already?)
Written by the show’s creator, Patrick Hale, and illustrated by one of its storyboarders, Jim Campbell, Over the Garden Wall: Book of the Unknown expands on Wirt and Greg’s adventures in the weird yet familiar world of the Unknown, a fantastical realm of Americana and fairy tale elements that bring to mind Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark as much as the Brothers Grimm. The comic consists of four stories that nestle in between the show's episodes, including a sort of prequel to the Woodsman’s plight and the full story of Fred the Horse, capturing the feeling and voice of the show very well. In a lot of ways, these short stories could be considered something like a “deleted scenes” bonus feature. I can definitely hear the voice actors reprising their roles here.
One particularly nice addition was sheet music for the show’s charming songs presented in a vintage format. If only I had any musical talent, I’d love to try them out.
The five-volume comic series that bring other writers and artists into the universe is also fun, though sticking closer to a more whimsical atmosphere and avoiding the spookier aspects for the most part. The first four volumes mostly follow Greg’s quest for the Hero Frog (or maybe he’s actually a pirate frog?) after he wanders back into the Unknown in his dreams, and involves a lot of candy and funny animal people.
More Greg than Wirt, you could say. In fact, I think Greg’s story is far better fleshed out here than Wirt, who is more relegated to the b-plots. This may fit with who these series are specifically aimed for, you know, grade-schoolers. Which is fine! In addition to the Hero Frog quest, each of the comics features a segment focusing on other characters, particularly Ms. Langtree’s classroom of adorable animal schoolchildren. While I enjoyed these, my favorite of the series is volume one, which reprised the “spoopy” feeling of the series by narrating the same series of events through the eyes of Greg and Wirt, Wirt’s being a much more dark and menacing interpretation of what was going on then Greg’s naive and enthusiastic take.
The series of stand-alone graphic novels also do a good job recapturing the show's ambiance, taking its characters and setting to some new and interesting territory while still retaining the voice and mood. The first, Distillatoria, by Jonathan Case, was particularly strong, blurring the boundaries between “the Unknown” and Wirt and Greg’s small-town New England home and deepening the characterization of Beatrice. I really liked the twist in this one!
Hollow Town by Celia Lowenthal was a nice, self-contained story for Wirt, Gregg, and Beatrice, written with some interesting insights into the world, along with some creepy doll people and fun diagrams of old fashioned work tools. I really enjoyed Jorge Monlongo’s more subdued interpretation of the setting as well.
My least favorite of the stand-alone graphic novels was Jonathan Case’s Circus Friends. It may be that, like Wirt, I’m just not a fan of circuses, but I felt that this one just didn’t add anything new to the series.
Finally, the coffee table book The Art of Over the Garden Wall was an informative and interesting exploration of the origin and creation of the miniseries, with plenty of cool concept art, storyboards, and background into Patrick McHale’s influences in developing the work. It was especially interesting to see how various ideas from the team came together to build such a cohesive, beautiful work, from the music to the voice actors. One of the better such tie in works I’ve seen and a useful look at how the animation process evolves and coalesces from feelings and ideas to a finished product.
The Creepy Case Files of Margo Maloo is an entertaining first entry in the Margo Maloo series, a fun children’s comic that packs a lot of cool, creepy escapades with a helping of the power of tolerance. Can we learn to get along with our neighbors, even when some of them happen to be ogres, trolls, or ghosts? Drew Weing’s artwork really brings his cast of characters, both kid and creature, to life and can even be appreciated by an adult interloper like myself.
When budding middle school journalist Charles arrives with his family to renovate a historic hotel in the metropolis of Echo City, he’s suspicious of his new home from the start, but then he encounters a troll in the building’s basement. When another kid passes him the card of Margo Maloo, a monster mediator who brokers a truce between Charles and his new neighbor, Charles’ invites himself along to chronicle Margo’s activities. As she reluctantly allows the muckraker into the hidden monster world of Echo City, he begins to broaden his horizons. I’m definitely interested in checking out the next installment for a spooky-funny Halloween treat, and I’d recommend this for any kids looking for something along those lines. There is a sequel out that I have yet to look at yet, but if Weing continues with what he’s establishing here, I think it would be exciting.
Rainbow Rowell’s graphic novel collaboration with cartoonist Faith Erin Hicks, Pumpkinheads is a light, pumpkin-spiced, and frothy romantic comedy. Definitely the “spoopiest” work I read this year, and perfect for people who prefer the bonfires and apple cider of the fall more than the ghouls.
Deja and Josiah have worked at The Pumpkin Patch, Nebraska’s best pumpkin patch (i.e., the best in the world) every autumn since beginning high school and now, as each prepares to graduate and leave for college, this will be their last Halloween at the patch. Both have devoted themselves to the yearly festivities, from the Succotash Hut to the corn maze, and they hope to make it a memorable one and as the pair crisscrosses the event in a quest to get Josiah to speak to his long time crush, they learn new things about each other. Sweet, and not spooky (a runaway goat notwithstanding) Pumpkinheads made me want to visit a pumpkin patch. A gentle, charming graphic novel that, while listed as “teen fiction” would be perfectly appropriate for anyone excited by the romantic possibilities of autumn.
I’ll round things out with a few chapter books I’d recommend to check out during this spooky season.
Katherine Arden’s pair of novels, Small Spaces and Dead Voices, were gripping, chilling, and yet endearing works, especially in audiobook form. Small Spaces introduces us to the headstrong eleven-year-old Ollie, in deep mourning for her mother, who died in a plane crash. She hates feeling condescended to in her grief and so has pushed all her classmates away.
Her charming Vermont town has some secrets of its own, too, and after encountering a strange woman trying to dispense with a spooky book, ranting about someone called “The Smiling Man,” Ollie will be glad she grabbed it as she finds more than she expected at the October class trip to a local historic farm. A farm completely filled with creepy scarecrows. As Ollie and two of her classmates Coco and Brian try to survive the World Behind the Mist and the Smiling Man’s games, Ollie must open up to other people’s help. All in all, a really creepy and atmospheric tale that even chilled me, as a 30 something, but I also think that Ollie and her new friends’ attitudes will keep everyone reading to the end.
I felt that the sequel, Dead Voices, which takes place a couple of months after Ollie, Coco, and Brian encountered the Smiling Man and takes them to a haunted ski lodge in the mountains outside of town, was even better. Told from both Ollie and Coco’s viewpoints, we get to see how both of them evolve and complement each other, and the blizzard conditions that trap them with their parents at the lodge tests them even more. A little more sophisticated and interesting than a lot of middle reader horror, I think that this series would be a great recommendation to readers looking for a spooky tale with a little bit more depth.
Scary Stories for Young Foxes by Christian McKay Heidicker seems to have gotten quite the accolades lately. Winner of the 2020 Newbery Award, I think I was inspired to request it after reading some buzz from the library. This was definitely an intense one!
Using the old and effective tactic of using an overarching narrator to link various stories, each more horrifying than the next, Scary Stories for Young Foxes uses classic horror motifs to deliver tales of the cruelty of nature. A litter of fox kits listens to an old vixen narrate cautionary tales of things foxes should beware of, the group slowly dwindling as things become too scary! From the “yellow smell” (rabies), the “golgathrush” (alligators), to even other foxes, and, of course, humans, personified by the most terrifying depiction of Beatrix Potter ever conceived (yep, she was into taxidermy just as much as treacly, pastoral animal fables), danger lurks at every turn!
All in all, as Mia and Uly, the two fox kit protagonists of the vixen’s stories encounter these things, they find themselves in some pretty harrowing circumstances and not everything works out in the end, just like nature. This is, I guess, an important thing to understand about the world, and I think that I would have found it riveting as a kid, if not upsetting. On the other hand, for a work that seems to be trying to represent how the natural world works, I would have had a few things to say about its accuracy as a know-it-all nature kid. “B-b-but, Beatrice Potter lived in England, and, and, raccoons, opossums, and alligators aren’t endemic to the UK! So, where is this supposed to take place? And bats don’t attack other animals en masse like that!” For those who are able to forgive such errors, there’s a lot of intense, gripping action here, and even some insights into animal life.
I’ll be posting another Halloween entry in the next couple of days, discussing some dark podcast tie-ins I read recently as well. We’re gonna need all the distractions we can for the next few days.