I stole this from another Goodreads reviewer: “Carolina Godina’s drawings will augment the creepiness of the text” (thank you Michelle Glatt). And I agree. Hide and Don’t Seek: And Other Very Scary Stories is creepy. It is spooky. It is weird. It is wild. It is horror at its best and worse.
I am an adult (in age if not actions) and I was spooked out! I got chills. I thought some of the stories were downright gross. And I was amazed at the strength of the stories. Some were actual “ghost stories” (with or without actual ghosts) and, on the surface, was just about a girl hiding in the corn field but there is an element of the supernatural. Just a story that you tell by the campfire. And others were a thriller that have a moral (the one about the boy and the crows was a commentary on society, mob mentality, us vs. them). A few do have “gore.” It felt sometimes that element was there for only shock value and not to move the story along. However, I am sure that kids today have seen worse, but it is there.
Anica Mrose Rissi is warped. Sometimes in a really good way and sometimes in a way I wonder, “How does this person sleep at night having this stuff in their head?” (The joke about Stephen King comes to mind: King to his children, “Do you want Daddy to tell you a bedtime story? Kids: NO!)
Ages at least 10 and up. Sensitive readers need not apply.
