It was a dark and stormy night ... okay, so it's only a dark and kind of windy night in St. Louis as I, rather than pondering weak and weary, write and muse powered by caffeine.

Welcome to the first review of A Year of Reading Dangerously!

The first book on the American Library Association's list that I'm using for the Year's guidelines is one that I read long ago in a classroom at St. Sufferingus, my prison - I mean grade school.

For the ALA list, click here.

Review one:  Scary Stories by Alvin Schwartz

Basic information: Published in 1981, New York. Harper & Row Publishers, Inc. and Scholastic Inc.

Most common reasons for challenges and banning: Schwartz's series of frightening stories for children is often challenged on taste grounds and, according to the ALA, occultism, paganism, violence and due to "religious viewpoint" (My guess is that goes to the pagan, occult thing.)

Length: 87 pages of stories, notes and bibliography included.

Raised eyebrow rating: Two brow raises.

That's the most basic nuts and bolts. Okay, into the real review ... You might want to bring your flashlights. (Or not.Vampire-toothed smile)

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As a child, I was fascinated by ghosts and folk stories of night creatures. My little heart would beat faster and I would suck in my breath as we drove past the two cemetaries I lived by in South St. Louis. I can still hear my mother and godmother telling me that if I didn't hold my breath when we passed them, the ghosts would follow me home. 

My mother and great grandmother were fond of scaring disrespectful youngesters by telling us, "Little girls who (insert: talk back to, smart mouth, or hit) their mothers, when they die, their hand sticks up so the coffin can't close and the grave digger throws dirt in their faces."

When I reached college, I horrified my fellow students and ill-fated roommates when I told them that my parents would silence crying children by saying they were going to "get the butcher knife and cut it off." This worked very well on crying about skinned knees or smashed fingers or just for general whining. I can't imagine why anyone would be put off by this tactic. (slightly evil chuckle)

To get over my very real fear of vampires, I read everything I could about them. I still love Ghosthunters on the Syfy channel and Leonard Nimoy's corny In Search of .  

So, being young, I found my way to Scary Stories, reading it in the library of one of my grade school classrooms. It should probably tell my readers something that this class room libary was in a Catholic school.

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I admit, I am not particularly religious. That said, I was raised Catholic and I have all the proper papers. Perhaps because I was brought up in this church of mysticism, saints holding eyeballs and miraculous, dare I say, almost magical traditions, I read Mr. Schwartz's tales with more than a bit of pleasure.

The book seems to contain some stories meant to appeal to the dirt-loving, gross-thing-fascination younger childrenpossess. The kind of fascination that leads little boys to slog through mud for tad poles and little girls to poke at dead  worms on the sidewalk. Rufus, my Bassett Hound, enjoys the latter too.

Schwartz takes many of his stories from well-known folk lore. Not unlike the Brothers Grimm or folk lorists before him. The key difference to me, though, is that many of the fairy tales and folk tales we still read to children and that Disney still makes into animated movies, are far darker than Schwartz's book, illustrations included.

As Schwartz wrote in the book's introduction, "Telling scary stories is something people have done for thousands of years, for most of us like being scared in that way."

Schwartz probably sanitizes his stories more than the Grimms, truth be told.  The tales the Grimms collected and that even soft-handed Hans Christen Anderson composed, were often meant to warn children of the dangers of the world. To the parents of yore who composed Snow White and Rose Red, Bluebeard and The Goosegirl, monsters and witches did exist. Terror was very, very real and more immediate in the forms of warfare, disease and feudal whim. 

Scary Stories is clearly meant to raise a little hair but also to induce a lot of laughs for the children reading it.

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Although I generally find the stories to be extremely innocent in today's world of Philip Garridos and puppy mills, I'm putting on my "straight and narrow" glasses. I think they are orange in color.

There are some ghoulish, violent stories to be found in Scary Stories. Bloody fingers, severed toes, dead man's brains. It could make a  parent think before handing the book to a very young child.

The section Schwartz entitles "Other Dangers," contains a number of urban legends like "The Hook," that could truly frighten even older kids. I admit, you tell me a ghost story or urban legend properly and I experience a shiver of dread. 

Some of the songs are gruesome - Schwartz acknowledges this in his Notes at the end of the book - and a little gross. But that induces nothing from me but an indulgent eyeroll. My child licks the floor and unsuspecting people's toes for pity's sake.

So, maybe the taste issue gets one raised brow.

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Addressing the religious and occult aspects of the stories is not as clear. (Again, I have my "Straight and Narrow" moral glasses on. Have you ever noticed the weird color blond hair turns through orange lens?)

Let us  assume I believe that witches are Satan's agents. Let us assume, again for the sake of this review, that I believe witchcraft to be evil or heresy or just plain against my world view. Let's say the same for magic or ghosts or spirits. 

Let us assume I teach my children to believe the same thing. 

With these assumptions in mind and orange lens on, that's where I could give the book the second raised eyebrow.

Many of these stories do center around any or all of the above. They are ghost stories, that much is plain. The majority of the stories involve supernatural elements. 

If I am particularly religious (assuming I belong to a religion that does not tolerate anything supernatural that does not conform to the definition of godly action), then yes, I could see have a problem with this book.

So, the second brow is raised.

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To end, it makes sense to me that this book is challenged but not frequently banned. For one thing, a parent would easily be able to take in what it is just looking at the cover or reading the title. Easy enough to take it out of Junior's hands and explain why Mommy doesn't want him reading it.

In my internet research, I only found two actual banning instances involving the Scary Stories series. 

The one challenge arose in Livonia, Michigan in 1990. According to list of banned and challenged in Michigan by the Plymouth District library in 2001, parents thought some of the poems and stories in the series would frighten first graders. Fair enough, but ban worthy? I leave that up to my fair and wise readers. My personal reaction is, "No."

The second is mentioned in Alvin Schwartz's 1992 obituary in the New York Times. Apparently a parent group in a Seattle suburb was attempting to get the books yanked from the local library but was refused. I could not find information on that beyond the New York Times story.

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To conclude, upon reading up on Scary Stories and reading them with relish, I have to wonder: Do stories rank up there with goblins or ghosts, witches and vampires, when it comes to what we fear?

Perhaps you will find the book "nicely nasty," or, you might decide that you don't approve of children reading about things that go bump in the night.

Whatever you do, read dangerously.

Tune in tomorrow for two more book reviews ... (bad Boris Karloff impression) If you dare! (cue creepy organ music and screaming soundtrack)

Sweet dreams, dear readers.