Our Favorite Writers Share Their Favorite Childhood Books
James Boice, author of the novels MVP, NoVA, and THE GOOD AND THE GHASTLY
If you’d like to scare the holy hell out of your child: Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark by Alvin Schwartz. And I mean the original edition from the 1980s that’s now out of print, which has beautiful, horrifying illustrations by Stephen Gammel. The editions currently in print have unfortunately replaced Gummel’s with sanitized, harmless illustrations—and it is just not the same. I still have not a reading experience as vivid and memorable as the ones I had reading these books as a little kid.