Haunted Houses

Scare-master Robert San Souci serves up ten chilling tales about untraditional haunted houses: a mansion full of pirate treasure, a ghost trapped in a mysterious dollhouse, a boy whose vacation house comes complete with people-eating spiders, and many more. But beware because not all of the protagonists in these stories get out alive. From School Library Journal Gr 4-8–These 10 spooky stories include a classic Halloween scare: visitors get their admission fee of $25 back if they make it to the top floor of a haunted house–but can they? In another, the primary occupant of a dollhouse is a ghost of a child who needs help moving from one consciousness to another. San Souci also writes about an abandoned teahouse with ghosts, a Ouija board that foretells a confusing yet doomed future, and a mother's spirit who is searching for her missing son. The stories are well paced and satisfyingly startling. While some are better written than others, this book won't stay on the shelves for long. Murphy and Revoy's black-and-white illustrations heighten the fright factor, making San Souci's collection even more riveting.Patty Saldenberg, George Jackson Academy, New York City © Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted. From Booklist Featuring 10 tales of houses haunted by things that growl, smother, lurk, slither, or go bump in both night and day, San Souci’s latest collection has a scare factor somewhere between eerie and creepy. Some familiar summer-camp stories get multicultural augmentation, including “La Casa de las Muertas” and “Chimera House,” starring Little D from inner-city Detroit, while others involve a demon in the teahouse, spiders and dust creatures that take over the world, and a dollhouse looking for new “inhabitants.” For a nice change of pace, there are even a couple of ghost stories with happy endings. As often happens in a collection, the quality of the stories varies, but there are no clunkers, and the best are outright skin-pricklers. Offer this to those who already know San Souci’s work or who want follow-ups for Alvin Schwartz’s Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark series, should it somehow stay on the shelf long enough to want company. Grades 4-6. --Cindy Welch