Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark: Another Tainted Piece of Childhood

This past week my niece discovered Alvin Schwartz's Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark series and I am over the moon about it.

I adored these books as a kid. The moment I realized I had read just about every Goosebumps book I could get my hands on I moved on to these urban legend anthologies and devoured them. Whenever I felt the need for a good scare I would turn to these books and crawl under my covers and allow myself to become unsettled by the stories they contained. The illustrations were scary enough on their own that sometimes I wouldn't even bother to read the stories and just stare at the weird pictures that preceded or followed them.

Sleep? What's that?

So, as we drove home from school, I listened to my niece rant and rave about how creepy the stories are and how they sound like they could be real (which makes them even creepier). I became excited at the prospect of being able to share the experience of rediscovering the books with her.

And then I asked her what she thought about the illustrations.

"They're okay."
"Okay? You don't think they're scary or creepy or gross?"
"Not really."
"Not really?"
"They're just drawings."
"JUST DRAWINGS?"
"Why are you yelling?"

I calmed down when we got home.

And then I flipped again when she showed me her copies of the books.

WHY?

So, it's been over twenty years since they were released and, really, I should have known that the publishers would have re-released them with new covers but it never occurred to me that they would dare change the illustrations.

Stephen Gammell's illustrations were half of the appeal of the books. (Okay, maybe more than half.) Sure, the stories were creepy as hell, but compounded with his bizarre drawings the became terrifying. His artwork is...something else. They are grotesque, surreal, nightmarish, gory, and gorgeous. At times they seemingly have nothing to do with the story they accompany but it doesn't matter because they set the tone.

I'm not sure what's going on, but I like it.

Like the opening for The Twilight Zone with the floating eyeball, randomly breaking windows, and ticking clock, the illustrations (even the book covers) let the young reader know they were entering a whole new dark and otherworldly realm; one that looks and feels like one resting just under the world we inhabit.

After finishing my tirade on how Harper Collins ruined my favorite childhood anthology and how nothing ever stays the same, I finally calmed down and showed the old illustrations to my niece.

She loves them.

She also hates them because they gave her nightmares and now her mother is mad at me.

I think I understand why they changed the illustrations. Sorry Harper Collins.

But the thing is, her reaction kind of proves a point. The stories alone are scary but accompanied with the right illustrations they become something else, eliciting a more profound response from the reader.

In my first post I talked about how the storyteller can do things with the written word that simply cannot be done through a visual medium. Well, this notion goes both ways. Brett Helquist's illustrations serve as extensions of the text while Gammell's augments them, causing the reader to become unsettled and wary before even reaching the story. They can stand on their own while Helquist's cannot.

Granted, Helquist does what illustrators are kind of supposed to do - illustrate the action in the narrative - but Gammell took the job to a whole new, ingenious, and disturbing level and there is just no going back from that.