Spookathon 2017
Hello friends!
So this Halloween, I thought I will read up some spooky books as part of the Spookathon challenge. I bought a few thrillers and was all worked up to read them. Guess what? I didn’t end up reading those because, well, I am a chicken. Yeah I know. I am 25 years old and still can’t handle a good old horror story. Well, you can’t blame me for how my mind reduces normal situations to freaking Conjuring ghost scenes. If I know myself, I would stop going to the bathroom altogether for three days if I am reading a real horror story. I would pester people around me to take me with them anywhere they go. To prevent such mishaps from happening, I put the real horror stories aside and ended up reading two children’s ghost stories (common, not Goosebumps!). And they turned out pretty okay for me. :)
The first book is The Witches by Roald Dahl. This was a real page-turner for me. Simply because the sentences were very easy to read and the story was interesting. There’s witchcraft involved and it was unlike what I was used to reading from Harry Potter books. :D This book was funny and crazy. I guess they had tried to keep it that way because children would be reading them. Duh.
The story revolves around a boy living with his grandmother. His grandmother is a believer of witches and goes on telling stories about them to the boy. The boy realizes the stories told by his grandmother are coming true. The second half of the book reveals how they deal with a terrible witch named The Grand High Witch who has incredible power to destroy all the children of Britain.
The story was as intended, childlike. Surprisingly, I enjoyed it. This popular author makes the plot run through like a stream. I liked the prose, the way the characters were portrayed and the cute illustrations. An added benefit, one can finish this book in one sitting. :)
Favorite lines:
“What’s so wonderful about being a boy anyway? Why is it necessarily better than being a mouse?.. Little boys have to go to school. Mice don’t… Mice don’t have to worry about money. When mice grow up, they don’t even have to go to war and fight against other mice. Mice, I felt pretty certain, all like each other. People don’t.”
The second book I got myself reading for this Spookathon is Coraline by Neil Gaiman. The story is about a girl named Coraline (not Caroline!). She is homebound during her summer vacation with her parents. She lives with them in a middle flat of an apartment. She is an explorer in nature. One day she finds herself unlocking a door to another world which is similar to her real world, only that her parents are not her real parents. They look very much like them, but the other mother is evil and ghastly. The other mother has black beads for her eyes. She wants to turn Coraline into a bead-eyed girl. She wants to keep Coraline with her forever and own her soul. She punishes Coraline’s real parents and everyone around her to have what she desires. The story then unfolds into whether Coraline escapes this other world or not.
What I noticed about this book is the creepiness that comes with it. On a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being the creepiest, the book deserves a real 6 or 7. I was surprised that a children’s book could get creepy for an adult. But it did. Not as much as a horror movie but still! There were these moments when I wanted the story to end quickly because I didn’t want to keep going through the dangers that Coraline was about to face. I felt that the book was a bit of a drag at times. I couldn’t sit through with it for more than an hour a day. That said, there are certain things that I like about the book. I love the way Coraline is shown in the story. She is immensely bold and courageous. She turns herself into a problem solver instead of staying scared. I am sure children reading this story will be inspired by Coraline’s brave heart.
Favorite lines:
“Someone had once told her that if you look up at the sky from the bottom of a mine shaft, even in the brightest daylight, you see a night sky and stars. Coraline wondered if the hand could see stars from where it was.”
I give both the books a rating of 4 out of 5!
Finally. I am glad I could catch up on some reading for this year’s Spookathon even though I couldn’t read the real horror novels that I bought for myself. I am sure I will find the courage to read them in the future! :D
What did you read for this Spookathon? Let me know in the comments. Until next time.
Love, Preethi
