BENEATH THE BED AND OTHER SCARY STORIES

A series debut with five screamworthy short stories.

Acquired from a strange box left at pseudo-author Mr. Shivers’ doorstep, the tales are initially introduced via a note to readers. Presented in a mix of first- and third-person narration, the tales run the gamut of eerie episodes. Classmates dare siblings John and Beth to visit a haunted house at night. A child feels a hair in the bottom of their stomach. A creepy statue draped with a tattered quilt haunts a living room. Oliver leaves his toys outside in the rain, but when he looks outside they’ve moved. Lucy hears scraping at the window at night, but mom and dad say it’s just a tree. Brallier’s (The Last Kids on Earth and the Cosmic Beyond, 2018, etc.) strong horror chops translate well into this Scary Stories To Tell in the Dark–lite package for early chapter-book readers. Rubegni mixes high-contrast spot and full-page illustrations, positioning sharply outlined characters against smudgy charcoal backgrounds. The atmospheric, full-color illustrations also aid in decoding. Each page contains fewer than 10 sentences; longer sentences are broken up in multiple lines with ample leading. Occasional words are set in boldface for emphasis and add a little extra thrill factor to the well-paced plots. The final page includes instructions on how to draw Oliver’s teddy bear as well as a few simple creative prompts.

Simplified spooks for the we-want-it-just-scary-enough crowd.