Many of us have fond nostalgia for the books we read as children. I recently stumbled across one of the books I adored as a child, Bunnicula. From there I fell down the rabbit hole (pun intended) of childhood book memories: trips to the library, reading under my covers with a flashlight after bedtime, checking the bookstore for the newest addition to a beloved series.
I’ve put together a list of some of the books I not only devoured as a child, but which were instrumental in fostering my lifelong love of reading. The publication dates of these books range from the 1960s to the 1990s, so there is likely to be some values dissonance or otherwise dated references, but overall they still hold up to this day.
The Bunnicula series by Deborah and James Howe
The story of Bunnicula by Deborah and James Howe book tells the tale of a cat, Chester, a dog, Harold, and a new pet rabbit their owners bring home. The titular Bunnicula was found at a movie theatre during a showing of Dracula; he has two tiny fangs, a fur pattern that resembles a cape, and he sleeps during the day. When vegetables begin turning up, pale white with two tiny holes in them, Chester is convinced their resident rabbit is a vampire and must be stopped. The horror is more silly than scary, focusing on Chester’s attempts to rid the world of the bunny, all narrated by Harold the dog. The animal characters, even the (maybe) vampire bunny, are endearing and charming and their adventures are a joy to read.
The Scary Stories trilogy by Alvin Schwartz
I am a big horror fan and the scariest books I ever read as a child were the trilogy of books by Alvin Schwartz: Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, More Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, and Scary Stories 3: More Tales to Chill Your Bones. These anthologies are a mix of stories, folklore, urban legends, songs, and truly haunting illustrations by Stephen Gammell. Though marketed as children’s books, there were few happy endings and plenty of monsters, death, ghosts, murder, and body horror along the way. These tales feature scares that would keep even adults up at night and chances are if you ever saw the illustration of the ghost from the story The Haunted House, she still haunts your nightmares. The books were re-released in 2011 with different artwork by Brett Helquist; in my opinion, the artwork is less scary, but that may be what you want, and the stories are the same and still hit with a timeless terrifying punch.
Goosebumps by R.L. Stine
For more age-appropriate horror, I turned to Goosebumps by R.L. Stine. It may surprise current young fans of the Goosebumps series that this horror juggernaut has been around since the early 90s. I remember being a kid reading the first Goosebumps book, Welcome to Dead House, at bedtime. I needed to get up and turn on all the lights in my room because I was so scared by the story.
The series focuses largely on standalone horror stories starring preteens dealing with supernatural creatures like ghosts, vampires, aliens, and lawn gnomes(!). There are some recurring elements like HorrorLand, the Haunted Mask, and Slappy the evil ventriloquist’s dummy (who even got his own spin-off series; good for him), and the series spawned a TV show and two movies. While I can’t speak to the newer novels, the ones from the original 90s run were just the right blend of horror, fantasy, and comedy. My favourite things about these books were the endings. Though the threats and scares facing the young protagonists didn’t tend to end in gore or death, the majority of the books did end on some kind of a twist that often stayed with me long after I’d finished the story. The ending from Welcome to Camp Nightmare is still my favourite.
Kids on Their Own
From supernatural horror to more reality-based fears, I had a habit of reading stories where the young protagonist was left to fend for themselves, either by accident or choice. Among my favourites were Hatchet by Gary Paulsen and My Side of the Mountain by Jean George, both featuring young boys trying to survive in the harsh wilderness with almost nothing but the clothes on their backs. On the flip side was From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler by E.L. Konigsburg, which followed a young girl and her little brother who run away from home to live in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. These stories impacted me as a child because when you’re so young and dependent on the adults in your life, the idea of suddenly being on your own in the big world is one of the scariest things imaginable. It was both a thrill and a comfort to read about kids in these situations pulling through and surviving against all odds. Today there’s the added appeal of reading about kids without the technology we take for granted, such as cellphones and the internet, who get through without having quick communication and Google search results at their fingertips.
Wayside School by Louis Sachar
To end on an upbeat note, the Wayside School series is always good for some ridiculous, strange, and silly fun. It’s like if Alice in Wonderland was set in a school. The titular school is thirty stories tall with no elevator, only stairs (it was meant to be a one floor school with thirty classrooms, but was instead built with one classroom per floor). Each book in the series is a collection of stories about the students, teachers, and staff at Wayside. The stories range from simple lessons to outrageous tales: a student tries to sell her toes, a teacher deals with dead rats trying to sneak into her classroom, an entire classroom of students swap names with each other, a teacher replaces the word “door” with “goozack”, and a student tries to deliver a note to Miss Zarves, the teacher on the nineteenth floor (there is no nineteenth floor and there is no Miss Zarves but she does feature quite a bit in the books for a non-entity). The stories are typically only a few pages long and you never know what is going to happen next, but you know it’ll be entertaining.
– Karli
Readers' Salon 