Hair-Raising Stories For Kids Also Raise Parents' Hackles
KIRKLAND - Several parents here say the "Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark" trilogy is too gruesome for young children. They're trying to ban the books from the John Muir Elementary School library.
One parent, Sandy Vanderburg, yesterday said she plans to appeal the Lake Washington School District materials committee's decision to keep the books by author Alvin Schwartz on the shelves.
The books aren't there now. Another parent, Nancy Allen, removed them last month and is holding them until the issue is resolved.
Vanderburg, president of the John Muir PTSA, said she discovered the books a couple of weeks after they arrived in October and read all three before filing the appeal. She argued that the stories were too violent. She also collected signatures on a petition of 70 parents and some teachers who want the books removed.
But the nine-member committee of parents and staff members agreed with the school librarian, said district spokeswoman Sylvia Soholt.
"The librarian stated that children need to be exposed to all points of view and libraries should provide materials that express these points of view," Soholt said. "Parents have control of what their own children read and should build a trust with their children, but not censor for other children."
"This is adding fuel to the fire, giving kids ideas of what to do to frighten other kids," Vanderburg said. "There is so much violence in them. When I started reading them, I thought: `I don't want my kids reading this.' They cannot be doing our children any good."
Vanderburg is also upset that the librarian read stories from the books to the sixth-graders - including her son - on Halloween.
"Nobody is going to 'fess up that they don't like this stuff in front of their peers," Vanderburg said. "They are going to be called a wimp."
Each of the three books contain a couple of dozen ghost stories and other scary tales averaging two or three pages each, which Schwartz collected from folklore, letters and word of mouth.
"The Wreck," a story in the second book, "More Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark," is the oft-told tale about a dead teenager attending a school dance. In this version, Jeanne asks Fred for a ride home after meeting him at a Christmas dance because she said she ran her car into a tree earlier that evening. She asks him to drop her off on a dark road, but he returns to get her phone number:
"He drove slowly down Brady Road through a thick woods, but there wasn't a sign of Jeanne. As he came around a curve, he saw the wreckage of a car ahead. It had crashed into a tree and had caught fire. Smoke was rising from it.
"As Fred made his way to the car, he could see someone trapped inside, crushed against the steering column. It was Jeanne. In her hair was the Christmas tinsel he had given her."
Also in "More Scary Stories," is "Wonderful Sausage," one of the tales the parents found most offensive. A butcher named Samuel Blunt kills his wife in a fit of anger, grinds her body into a pork-blend sausage and sells it. The sausage is so popular with his customers that Blunt continues to kill people - a plump teacher, his portly dentist - to satisfy demand, until he meets a similar fate.
The parents may appeal the decision to the Kirkland School Board, but appeals are limited to whether the committee followed the correct procedure, Soholt said. The committee receives three or four complaints a year, usually around Halloween, she said.
Schwartz is to be a speaker for the district's young authors conference in the spring.