Fuse 8 n’ Kate: In a Dark, Dark Room by Alvin Schwartz

Halloween is almost upon us! And like every year, Kate is always challenging me to come up with some classic scares. This year, we’ve seen Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark adapted to the silver screen. Seems only natural to then pull out what I would consider to be Schwartz’s other scary classic for kids. And, oh joy, it’s part of the I Can Read series! What I had not counted on was that in 2017 Harper Collins re-illustrated the series. What to do? Well… why not do both versions? Original illustrator Dirk Zimmer originally hailed from Germany while current illustrator Victor Rivas lives in Barcelona. Who is scarier in the end? Will this be like that time Harper Collins re-illustrated Scary Stories with Brett Helquist instead of Stephen Gammell and the world went mad? Guess you’ll just have to find out for yourself.

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Show Notes:

• Here is the book I handed to Kate. I had a feeling she’d dig it.

• With her natural inclination towards felines, Kate noticed the black cat in the original Zimmer illustrations immediately. Alas, Rivas included only a single kitty in his book, and it’s of a significantly less than realistic variety. Compare:

• “Boop!”

• In the course of attempting to determine relative scares, Zimmer may have won this round with the story “The Teeth” if only because a stubbly guy in a trenchcoat is always going to strike you as more sinister than a dandy with a jolly cane.

• However, on the subject of corpses, Rivas wins this round hands down. Zimmer’s poor fellows just look like they’ve had an awful night on the town and need to catch up on their sleep.

• For Kate, the scariest part of the story “The Green Ribbon” wasn’t the whole decapitation element. It was the unnamed dolly at the start.

• “So . . . you’re not going to feed me? Is that the situation here? I’m just making sure.”

• Ghost V. Ghost . . . aw, heck. It’s not even a contest, is it?

• However, Zimmer wins the next round. Turns out, what you cannot see can sometimes be scarier than what you can. Particularly when you’re dealing with pirate ghosts:

• A toast to the man who loved backmatter long before it was cool.

Here are Kate’s Grown-Up Things she liked:

• First up the game Zombie Dice: https://www.amazon.com/SJG-131313-Zombie-Dice/dp/B003IKMR0U

• Second up, a Zombie catnip toy you can make yourself and the link here goes to Kate’s old and, frankly, amazing blog from 2014: http://katokula.blogspot.com/2014/03/zombie-catnip-toy.html

• I am serious. I LOVE the American Writers Museum of Chicago. No lie. When you all come to Chicago next (and for some of you that will be the next American Library Association conference in June) you must visit it.

• Finally, here’s is a glimpse of all the books I received from Sourcebooks that I reference at the end of the show:

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