When I was teaching high school, during Banned Books Week, I brought in the ALA’s list of most frequently challenged books.  The students tried to guess what was on it and why, and then we discussed book-banning and censorship in general.

One book that has made that list over and over again–and it’s in the top ten even now, thirty-two years after the first installment was published–is the Scary Stories series by Alvin Schwartz, with the mindblowingly masterful illustrations of Stephen Gammell.

(Collage from geeklegacy.com)

The books are usually challenged for the rather arbitrary reason, ‘Unsuited to age group.’  I think it’s  pretty strange to assume that a book that’s suited to one ten-year-old is going to be suited to all ten-year-olds everywhere.  I’ve known ten-year-olds who love Captain Underpants (the most challenged book of 2012) and ten-year-olds who devour Stephen King.  Just like what terrifies a thirty-something like me–the dark, big fish, the telephone–is not going to terrify every other adult.  Obviously.

As a child, I was far more frightened by the “Terrible Tunnel” episode of Fraggle Rock than I was of any book.  Because when it came to books, I was in control.  My imagination was the engine that gave books their power.  I could skip past a particularly creepy page, or throw a book across the room if I liked, or study a single terrifying paragraph or image until the fear it provoked had crumbled away, replaced by familiarity, admiration, and even a little bit of pride.

I loved Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark as a child, even though–and partly BECAUSE–the illustrations haunted me.  I’m glad no one managed to remove these books from our school library.  Then again, I’m pretty sure that if they had, my friends and I would have passed our personal copies around even more feverishly, arranging extra sleepovers just to pore over their pages by flashlight, enthralled by the power of words and pictures.