Category Archives: Bedtime Stories

Bedtime Stories: Crazy new adventures by Neil Gaiman

fotunately the milkPost by Mark T. Locker.

Fortunately, the Milk by Neil Gaiman.

Neil Gaiman is one of the most diverse and prolific writers I know of. From eerie to fantastic (and often a bit of both), from picture books to long novels for adults, Gaiman covers the gamut. Best known, perhaps, for his super scary young adult book Coraline which was made into a movie, he has taken a turn with his newest book, a short picture-filled story called Fortunately, the Milk. The story begins with a family that is fresh out of milk. The father steps out to the corner store to pick some up. When he doesn’t return for a long time, his two girls begin to worry. Finally, after a very long time (far longer than it should take to get some milk from the corner store) he returns. When asked what took him so long, he relates the long and inexplicable tale of what befell him when he left the market.

The rest of the book is the story of what took him so long, with occasional interjections by his daughters. It’s way more incredible than you’d dare think. Burbling green aliens hell-bent on redecorating Earth in a most tasteless manner is only the beginning. A stegosaurus in a time-travelling hot-air balloon named Professor Steg is to be his companion through time and space for a large portion of his journey. The father is hilariously focused on making sure the bottle of milk is safe throughout the entire ordeal. Hence the title, Fortunately, the Milk. “Fortunately, the milk was safely tucked away when the volcano erupted” for example.

My son and I both had a great time reading this book. I was worried it might be too random and nonsensical but it manages to retain a fairly cohesive, if totally weird, narrative thread. The only difficulty is that there are no chapter breaks, so reading at bedtime is a challenge. You have to choose an arbitrary stopping point which is easier to argue over than a chapter’s end. Super fun and imaginative book for kids 6-10.

 

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Bedtimes Stories: Scary Haunted House Books for Adults

Post by Mark T. Locker.

Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson and Hell House by Richard Matheson.

Happy Halloween, everyone! Here are two similar but very distinct haunted house novels. Hill House and Hell House, besides having quite similar names, have similar premises (no pun intended!). Each features a scientifically-minded individual engaging in an empirical study of a well-known haunted house.

Hell HouseIn Hell House, Dr. Lionel Barrett is invited by a wealthy eccentric to spend a week in a notoriously haunted—and dangerous—house with two mediums to gather definitive proof of the paranormal. In this case, the site is known as the Belasco house, named for the former owner, a horrifically depraved and evil man named Emeric Bellasco. Many lives were lost in the house and many angry spirits remain. Every attempt to reside in and study the house has ended in death. Dr. Barrett is convinced he can end the whole thing using technology. Florence Tanner, a spiritualist and mental medium, wants to connect with the spirits and put them to rest. Benjamin Franklin Fischer, a physical medium, visited the home as a teenager and hopes simply to get through the week alive. 

 

hill houseThe Haunting of Hill House is by Shirley Jackson,  a well-known author, most notably of her chilling short story “The Lottery”. Like Hell House, this story is based around a science-minded professor spending time in a haunted house with a couple assistants hoping to gather concrete proof of the supernatural. This story is built more around the characters, especially Eleanor, one of the young women staying with Dr. John Montague. Unlike the Belasco house, there is no particular set of event that makes the house so awful, rather it seems the house itself is malevolent. Its forces get into the characters minds and exploit their weaknesses.

Both are spooky and enjoyable books, though Shirley Jackson’s superb writing style and brilliant subtlety of narrative flow through the novel make it seem creepier. You never see a chair fly across a room, which somehow makes the whole thing scarier. Matheson’s book, however, highlights the darker parts of the human soul and the icky depths some people descend to. Either one will make you shiver in your bed as you read.

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Bedtime Stories: Scary and Awesome Pumpkin Carving Ideas!

Post by Mark T. Locker.

extreme pumpkinExtreme Pumpkins: Diabolical Do-it-yourself Designs to Amuse your Friends and Scare your Neighbors by Tom Nardone

We are less than two weeks from Halloween now! We picked out our pumpkins a couple weeks ago and my son has been rarin’ to cut into his ever since. For my part, I’m always hurting for inspiration when it comes to most crafty concepts. I came across this out-of-box book at the library. It’s full of amusing and sometimes a little disturbing ideas. On the cover is a mean pumpkin face chewing an understandably surprised-looking littler pumpkin. On the back is a pumpkin who has vomited its insides all over the table. Yuck! Unless you are a six-year-old boy, in which case: awesome!

Have you ever wanted to make a Darth Vader helmet pumpkin? How about using toothpicks as scary sharp teeth? What about a pumpkin puking guacamole? Whatever your weird desires, this book probably has some ideas for you.

Note: I did not do any of the pumpkins in this book in the end. I probably should have, as mine looks like a disaster. My kid’s looks extremely abstract and my wife’s is a fantastic nerd reference.

a-well-done-pumpkin-2

the-territorial-pumpkin-on-my-lawn-2

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Bedtime Stories: Nighttime Shivers for the Brave

 

whispering skullThe Whispering Skull by Jonathan Stroud.

Post by Mark T. Locker.

In case you didn’t know, it’s October, the scariest month of the year. It’s actually MID-October now, which is pretty scary in its own way. Well, there’s nothing I like more as the days grow shorter, the leaves turn to flame and the mists descend upon us, than to curl up with a nice creepy story. A while back I wrote a review of Lockwood & Co. Part I by Jonathan Stroud. With a subtitle like The Screaming Staircase, there was really no way it could be bad, and it didn’t disappoint. With much anticipation on my part, the sequel was finally (and in a timely fashion, just in time for fall!) released. The Whispering Skull picks up where the last installment leaves off, with our protagonist ghost hunter Lucy Carlyle discovering that she can hear the voice of a haunted skull her colleague has in a jar. How’s that for a spooky intro?

In this story, Lockwood, George, and Lucy, a team of freelance ghost hunters, are hired to look into a mysterious grave found in a nearby cemetery. What they discover in the tomb is a relic so deadly and powerful it threatens to destroy anyone who comes near. And with the discovery of this relic, the haunted skull suddenly becomes very talkative. Is it connected to the tomb somehow? And how much of what it says is truth, how much is lies to manipulate and divide the team?

Spooky fun reading for a brave kid or young adult or, in this case, regular adult.

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Bedtime Stories: Crayons on Strike!

Day the Crayons QuitPost by Mark T. Locker.

The Day the Crayons Quit by Drew Daywalt. Pictures by Oliver Jeffers.

One of the best things about the new school year is that means new surprise books on library day. Last year I learned just how many different Lego and Star Wars-themed easy readers were being cranked out by unscrupulous children’s publishers. Goodness knows what this new year will bring, though I must say it’s off to an auspicious start. My boy was very excited to show off his new library book, and will good reason. The Day the Crayons Quit is a highly entertaining and original story.

When Duncan opens his box of crayons, he finds instead a series of letters to him, each penned—er, crayoned—by a different color. Yellow and orange write contradictory letters arguing over which is the REAL color of the sun. Pink feels snubbed because Duncan thinks it’s a “girl” color. Peach is mortified because Duncan peeled all his paper off and now Peach is naked! You can bet that gets a lot of laughs in our home!

I am not familiar with Drew Daywalt but Oliver Jeffers is well-known and well-loved in our home. Great book for kids 4-6.

greencrayons

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