Scare Me! . . . just a little

I visited a library in Southeast Minneapolis yesterday, and read from some of my books to a mixed crowd of mostly 1st through 3rd graders. Before I picked up the book titled “Cave of the Bookworms” from the Library of Doom series, I asked if anyone in the audience liked scary stories. Everyone raised a hand. So I started reading the creepy story that begins and ends with a young boy dreaming about monsters. The little kids’ eyes grew wide. Their jaws dropped. They stared at the illustrations I held out to them. They responded so enthusiastically that I read another book from the series at the end of the presentation. After the kids had left, an adult came up and said how amazed he was that “the little girls liked the story as much as the little boys.” Everyone likes to be scared, I said. Especially if you’re in a safe environment such as a library or a classroom -- or, like one first-grader yesterday, on your grandmother’s lap.