One night, just before dinner, Max throws a tantrum in front of his mother’s boyfriend. His mother tries to restrain him, but Max bites her shoulder and runs out of the house to a nearby shore where he finds an abandoned sailboat.

After several days of sailing he reaches an island, which is home to large talking beasts (the wild things):  Carroll, their unofficial “leader,” Ira and Judith, a pair of lovers, Alexander, who constantly craves attention, Douglas, the second-hand to Carroll, and The Bull, a quiet and intimidating Thing that mostly keeps to himself. Max sees they are in the middle of an argument and approaches them. They consider eating him but he convinces them he’s a great king with magical powers capable of bringing harmony to the group. Upon hearing this they crown Max their king. KW, a wild thing who had temporarily left, returns to the group.

Max first declares a rumpus (a chaotic game of smashing trees and tackling each other). Carroll, one of the Wild Things, takes him around the island, Max’s kingdom, and shows him a model he’s built of what he wishes the island looked like. Inspired by this, Max orders the construction of an enormous fort. However, another argument arises over the inclusion of Bob and Terry, two owls who are KW’s friends, into the group. Max’s solution is to organize a dirt-clod fight to relieve tension but one of the Wild Things, Alexander, is physically hurt during the fight, causing yet more arguments, and KW leaves the group again.

Eventually, the truth about Max comes out: he is neither a king nor does he have magical powers. This upsets Carroll, who accidentally rips Douglas’s arm off. KW talks to Max about how it is already difficult enough for the wild things without Carroll throwing tantrums. Hearing this, Max finally understands his mother’s position and decides that it is time to leave the island. The group prepares Max’s boat for his return journey and they bid him farewell.

Upon returning home Max is embraced by his distraught mother, who hugs him and happily watches and smiles as he hungrily eats dinner.

This most beloved children’s book gets a film treatment, and like many I went to the theatre with fond memories of childhood and reading Where The Wild Things Are. The film by Spike Jonze starts off very stylized as the audience sees the world through Max’s eyes and discovers a lonely boy with a vivid imagination, who is starved for attention. Right from the start of the film it felt flat and distant for me and somewhat unpolished.

Max, upon running away, discovers a sailboat conveniently docked upon a nearby bay, and surprisingly he boards it and knows how to sail it. He sails for what appears to be many days and arrives at a strange island, despite storms and lack of food and water. I may sound like I am nitpicking, but I have my reasons.

First, the best part of the book is that Max’s room transforms and he has an imaginary journey. The film’s realistic journey for me took away the imagination of it all to begin with. Secondly, it was very hard for me to suspend reality with Max being such an expert sailor in the real world. I would have been okay with him traveling and commanding an imaginary boat. Lastly, through this whole event Max needs no nourishment, nor do the monsters on the island. Again, if you are going to go the realistic route, let’s get some reality in there. Keep in mind, several days pass during Max’s stay on the island.

The movie also, at least for me, goes heavily unresolved. Max does not make peace with the monsters, he just up and leaves.  He also makes no peace with his mother at home. He sails back  to his world with expert skill once more and runs home; apparently no time has really passed and all is well when he gets home. Mom gives him a great big silent hug and feeds him a warm meal with a big piece of chocolate cake. They stare lovingly into each other’s eyes, and all is so very well.

The film version of Where The Wild Things Are appears to me almost like a lame child psychology movie from the 1970s, led  by a child actor too old for his role, along with the scarier cousins of the Banana Splits along for the ride. This film unrolls like it is either to illustrate negative child behavior or to provide a topic of discussion for students of psychology. Its weird Freudian melodrama is played out with male and female roles through the monsters, and their search for a leader. There is even a scene where Max comments how he wishes the monster had a mother. I cannot find a shred of redeeming quality in this movie, and I  feel a part of my childhood has been stomped upon by Spike Jonze. The wonderful feeling this book gave me is now replaced by some sick child psychology human puppet movie that is burned upon my memory and will not leave. Many critics and reviewers are raving about Spike Jonze and his interpretation of a what is truly a wonderful book. I do not think they saw the same movie I did. If you have read the book and love it dearly, do not watch this film.  Unless you are a child psychology major; then, go for it.

Where the Wild Things Are is scheduled to hit theaters on October 16th and stars Catherine Keener, Max Records, Mark Ruffalo, Lauren Ambrose, Chris Cooper, James Gandolfini, Catherine O’Hara and Forest Whitaker.

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Recently we also noted images from the NY Times and and a couple of new TV spots for the film.

Where the Wild Things Are is scheduled to hit theaters on October 16th and stars Catherine Keener, Max Records, Mark Ruffalo, Lauren Ambrose, Chris Cooper, James Gandolfini, Catherine O’Hara and Forest Whitaker.

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Where the Wild Things Are is scheduled to hit theaters on October 16th and stars Catherine Keener, Max Records, Mark Ruffalo, Lauren Ambrose, Chris Cooper, James Gandolfini, Catherine O’Hara and Forest Whitaker.

Make sure that you also check out the beautiful trailers that are online.

Where the Wild Things Are is scheduled to hit theaters on October 16th and stars Catherine Keener, Max Records, Mark Ruffalo, Lauren Ambrose, Chris Cooper, James Gandolfini, Catherine O’Hara and Forest Whitaker. It’s based on the classic story by Maurice Sendak.

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I think you need to see these things move to appreciate what it looks like Jonze might pull off, so make sure you check out the two beautiful trailers that have been released.

Based on the classic story by Maurice Sendak, Where the Wild Things Are is scheduled to hit theaters on October 16th (read the companion novel by Dave Eggers before), and stars Catherine Keener, Max Records, Mark Ruffalo, Lauren Ambrose, Chris Cooper, James Gandolfini, Catherine O’Hara and Forest Whitaker.

You can check out the two other posters for the film as well–and may want to check out the first trailer, which came out in March.

Where the Wild Things Are is scheduled to hit theaters on October 16th (though you can get the companion novel by Dave Eggers before), and stars Catherine Keener, Max Records, Mark Ruffalo, Lauren Ambrose, Chris Cooper, James Gandolfini, Catherine O’Hara and Forest Whitaker.

You don’t get much better with novelizations of companion pieces then getting Eggers, who is also credited with Jonze as having written the screenplay for the film. We talk a bit about awards at BSC, but Eggers wins ones that his the wallet like the TED and Heinz, and has been a finalist for the National Book Critics Award and Pulitzer Prize. You can say enough about McSweeney’s either (which he founded).

Book Synopsis:

Seven-year-old Max likes to make noise, get dirty, ride his bike without a helmet and howl like a wolf. In any other era, he would be considered a boy. In 2007, he is considered willful and deranged. His home life is problematic. His parents are divorced; his father, immature and romantic, lives in the city. His mother has taken up with a younger man who steals quarters from the change bowl in the foyer. Driven by a series of pressures internal and external, Max leaves home, jumps in a boat and sails across the ocean to a strange island where giant beasts reign. The “Wild Things” is from Maurice Sendak’s visionary classic. This is an all-ages adventure, full of wit and soul, that explores the chaos of youth while Max explores the chaos of the world around him. The live-action film, co-written by Spike Jonze and Dave Eggers, and directed by Jonze, is due this autumn.

Make sure you go check out the latest trailer for the film from earlier this month, and be amazed!

Wild Things is set to be published in the U.S. and UK by McSweeney’s in October. I would imagine that BSC will have a review for you.

Is it just me or is it always Warner Bros. putting out the hot films lately? I bow down to Mr. Jonze. the first and second poster, and also some images from the film.

Where the Wild Things Are stars Catherine Keener, Max Records, Mark Ruffalo, and will be out on October 16, 2009.

Film synopsis:

Maurice Sendak’s classic book comes to the big screen in an adventure tale for every generation. Where the Wild Things Are follows the adventure of Max (Max Records), a mischievous young boy who is sent to his room after rebelling against his mother (Catherine Keener). Max’s imagination is free to roam, and it soon transports him to a thriving forest bordering a vast sea. Delighted, he sets sail for the land of the Wild Things, where mischief reigns and Max rules. In bringing this imaginative fantasy to life, Jonze leads a team of filmmakers incorporating the most dynamic elements of voice performance, live-action puppetry and computer animation

    
So, I’m seeing from elsewhere on BSC, “they” have made a live action movie of Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak.

Personally, I don’t think Hollywood can handle Maurice Sendak.

It is quite possible Sendak is the most subversive children’s author in the history of American letters. Sendak’s worlds are dark and dangerous, and yet as every day as dreams. The children in his stories stroll through magical worlds and yet are perfectly real. They act like kids. They act out like kids. And Max from Where the Wild Things Are is a prime example.

Where the Wild Things Are is a short book. I think it has a grand total of 26 sentences. In it, Max misbehaves, gets sent to his room, from his room is taken by boat to meet the Wild Things. He tames them by sheer will power, initiates a wild rumpus until he gets tired of it and wants his mommy. He leaves in spite of their threats to eat him, and gets home to find himself still in the middle of his time out, but his dinner is still hot.

In this brief, magnificently illustrated book, Max is completely unexamined. He’s not troubled, traumatized, bullied or even sad. He’s a rowdy boy who gets on his mother’s last nerve one day (I mean, come on, he chases the dog with a fork), and who at the same time loves his mommy and wants a hot dinner. Sendak does not see these two things in any way in opposition or conflict, and anyone living knows this is the truth. We’ve all been there. Love and over-doing-it are everyday events. At the end of the story, Max is unchanged, and probably unrepentant, but beloved nonetheless.

Despite the fact that in the end Max gets lonesome and decides to go home to his mother, there’s nothing of Never-Never Land where the Wild Things are. The monsters there aren’t looking for a mother, and they are never going to return home to grow up. Neither are the Wild Things that other staple of children’s literature, the surrogate adults, despite the fact Sendak has said he got the the germ of Wild Things came to him because of his childhood visits to his relatives from Eastern Europe (which explains all that tufty black hair). If anything the Wild Things are a gang of kids that Max takes over. But Max does not change or improve them any more than they change or improve him.

It is all these things that make the book is subversive. Where the Wild Things Are doesn’t attempt to explain or redirect Max, or the children who read it. It accepts bad behavior. It accepts the creation and existence of monsters. It does nothing about them. Monsters are and monsters will be, and kids will continue to make them up and go on a wild rumpus. And being loved and hot dinners do not depend on renouncing your monsters.

Sendak himself knew about the real danger of the real world. Born in Brooklyn, the child of Polish-Jewish immigrants, he was a sickly kid in a time before penicillin. He was a Jewish kid in a time when Jewish kids were being slaughtered. He was a gay man in a time when if word of his orientation got out he could have suffered severe consequences, not the least of which would be never being permitted to write another book for children.

He never flinches from this familiarity with darkness in his work. Even in his alphabet books he can’t play it strictly cute. “H” is for “having headaches,” and “T” is for “Throwing Tantrums.” And yet, he never gives into the dark either. His stories are not despairing. His matter-of-fact, undramatic acceptance of life’s imperfection and hazards allows for a unique view of the inner and outer lives of the children. His children are plainly not rich. They live in small apartments with little or no furniture. Their houses are dark and a little down-at-the-heels (although very clean). They are neatly, but not expensively dressed. These are Brooklyn kids, not Manhattan kids.

In keeping with the working-class world he portrays, Sendak’s color pallet is consistently subdued. The main colors are brown (as in In The Night Kitchen) and a particular kind of washed out blue. There’s nothing bright. No reds or oranges. Certainly no primary colors. There’s an occasional yellow that looks like it might be trying to be bright, but never quite makes it.

His worlds are overtly dangerous. Robbers turn up when children are alone. Small boys get devoured by lions. Infants get kidnapped by goblins. Children roam abandoned through junkyards.

But for all this gloom, Sendak’s children are mighty creatures. They win through not because they are good or true or because they Learn Better (except in the case of Pierre who mends his ways only after being eaten by a lion). They win because they’re loud, obnoxious and unafraid. They shout at the robbers. They stare down the Wild Things. They escape naked from kitchen ovens and make airplanes out of bread dough. They are unafraid of the frightening world they live in. Wholly creatures of the forbidding landscapes, they make the magic out of pure will. And with very, very, very few exceptions do they get any help from adults of any variety, let alone the wise and understanding sort. Heck, Sendak’s kids don’t even get a talking cat who cleans up after himself.

There is one last barrier to making a truly fine and faithful adaptation of Sendak’s work. These books scare the bejeezus out of adults. They are way the hell too real, and not just because he dares to show full-frontal nudity in a kid’s book. With all the power of the illustrations and without any brake in the form of a moral or adult intervention, Sendak’s books themselves are wild things. And although Hollywood kids movies are many things, they are not wild. Sendak’s nonjudgmental, realistic approach to childhood and children is more than most Hollywood adults would be willing to handle when making a children’s movie. Max is going to have to be made into a hero. The Wild Things are going to have to be made cuddly or wise. There’s going to have to be understanding and change and reconciliation. That magnificent rarity of the non-examination of a kid making up unsupervised worlds that makes Where the Wild Things Are the weirdest and most wonderful slice-of-life story ever written is going to go away because somebody’s got 90+ minutes to fill, and you can’t stretch Where the Wild Things Are to that length and keep it whole.

Maybe I’m wrong. I hope I am. But I don’t know. Some things may just be better left on the other side of the ocean, through a day and in and out of weeks and over a year, where the Wild Things are.

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Just for your convenience here is the trailer again:

Be sure to check out all the other posts we have regarding Where the Wild Things Are. This is scheduled for an October release to theaters.

    
_{A publisher, publicist, author, studio, or artist and have news or announcements you think should be noted at BSCreview? Email us at admin@BSCreview.com and let us decide!}

We’ve had images and posters, and now we finally have video of the Spike Jonze adaptation to the classic Sendak book.

    
For the aforementioned poster and images go here.

    
_{A publisher, publicist, author, studio, or artist and have news or announcements you think should be noted at BSC? Email us at admin@bookspotcentral.com and let us decide!}

This should look ridiculous, but like via Sendak these images seems to reveal melding adventure and childhood whimsy with a slight bit of horror. I think it looks awesome

    
You can view the whole gallery at USA Today. Also, check out the poster and previous images from earlier this month!

If you are a Sendak fan, support Where the Wild Things Are in our on-going book tourney!

    
_{A publisher, publicist, author, studio, or artist and have news or announcements you think should be noted at BSC? Email us at admin@bookspotcentral.com and let us decide!}

The film is scheduled for a October release. Here is the poster:

    
Recently it has been reported that we will see a trailer for the film attached with the release of Monster vs. Aliens. There have, however, been images previously released:

    
One of my all time favorites (I have a couple of first editions of the book) – and you can vote for it in our on-going book tourney! I hope Jonze, and a cast that includes Catherine Keener, Max Records, James Gandolfini, and Forest Whitaker are able to present this gem via a new medium to a new generation!

    
_{A publisher, publicist, author, studio, or artist and have news or announcements you think should be noted at BSC? Email us at admin@bookspotcentral.com and let us decide!}

It’s always been a concern of mine that as a site we weren’t topical enough in terms of our timing; in short seasonal. So I gathered the BookSpot Central clique to offer our readers some Halloween recommendations. Now, as we are people, of course a simple request turns into a committee situation which at it’s heart is Halloween – a gathering of friends, not a night to roam solo (unless you’re a weirdo – and probably on the run at this point) and if you’re like me you may need some entertainment recommendations to both hold you over and keep your mind off the guilt attacking you in waves via doorbell rings over as you (much like in many SF films) shut down all power and act like you’re not home.

At first I was going to put some limitations on this and due to that you will see one offering from most who participated, but I felt to kick off the era of BookSpot Central timeliness, I would unleash Maria from Bear Mountain. She’s one of those good neighbors, the one who gives multiple goodies, not at all like the Bodhisattva who does indeed buy candy specifically for Halloween, but uses them as rations for the night his home is in stealth mode. I hope everybody enjoys!

Maria -

Ammie Come Home by Barbara Michaels:

It begins as a lark — a harmless diversion initiated by Washington, D.C., hostess Ruth Bennett as a means of entertaining her visiting niece, Sara. But the séance conducted in Ruth’s elegant Georgetown home calls something back; something unwelcome … and palpably evil. Suddenly Sara is speaking in a voice not her own, transformed into a miserable, whimpering creature so unlike her normal, sensible self. No tricks or talismans will dispel the malevolence that now plagues the inhabitants of this haunted place — until a dark history of treachery, lust, and violence is exposed. But the cost might well be the sanity and the lives of the living.

Witch by Barbara Michaels:

For Ellen March, the secluded old house nestled in the pine woods is more than the dream home she’s long been searching for. It’s an escape, a chance to start over, to forget the pain of her failed marriage and enjoy the restful pace of small-town living. Here, too, is a golden opportunity to get to know Norman McKay, her handsome and worldly new neighbor. But after dark in Ellen’s “perfect” house, strange visions invade her restless mind: silent strangers moving through the twilight shadows, the ghostly figure of a woman and a spectral white cat. Ellen came here hoping to bury the past, but something terrifying has taken its place. Her safe haven has become her prison . . . and there is no escape.

House of Many Shadows: by Barbara Michaels

Meg Rittenhouse fears she is losing her mind. The doctors tell her the strange and disturbing hallucinations she’s been experiencing ever since her accident are all in her head, and that, with a little rest, the haunting visions will vanish. But accepting an invitation to stay with her cousin in the country may be the worst decision Meg has ever made. Here, in a remote old house miles from anywhere, the terrible sights and sounds have gotten even worse. Suddenly eerie black shapes dance in the shadows—mocking Meg, haunting her . . . threatening her. And the presence of kind, considerate Andy Brenner, the caretaker, both reassures her and terrifies her—because Andy also sees these dark specters . . .

The Crying Child by Barbara Michaels:

Joanne McMullen’s fears for her sister’s sanity have brought her to remote King’s Island, Maine. Mary’s grief over the loss of her child is threatening to send her over the edge—and her insistence that she has heard an eerie, childlike wailing in the woods fuels Joanne’s anxiety. And now Mary’s taken to disappearing at midnight in search of the source of the heartrending moans. But it’s not just her sister’s encroaching madness that is chilling Joanne’s blood—it’s her own. Because suddenly, impossibly, she also hears the crying child.

Most of Barbara Michael’s work has a disturbing, haunting element to it. These are all good reads (as is her other work and the novels she writes as Elizabeth Peters). These are definitely novels to be read by a fireplace while dusk looks over your shoulder.

Brian –

Dark Harvest by Norman Partridge manages to take just about every image and item associated with Halloween and bring it down to its essences and then combine them all into what is, in many ways, the ultimate book about the holiday. Everything from cornfields and candy to jack-o-lanterns is in Dark Harvest and not only do these things appear but they also have a more sinister meaning in their place in the holiday then what you might expect. It will definitely throw the trappings of the holiday under a new light.

As always each year around the holiday I try to read some horror titles. Books that I’ve picked up over the course of the year get bumped to the top of the TBR pile and I grab a couple blind off of the shelf too.

Virgin Books in the U.S. has just recently started a new line of horror books. The first title in it is The Unblemished by Conrad Williams and I just finished it today. I’m currently writing a review for it but this HAS to be one of the scariest damn books that I’ve read in a long time, if not ever. Brutal, intense and again, scary.

I also just started reading The Wolfman by Nicholas Pekearo and I also picked up the second title (I think) in the Virgin horror line, Banquet for the Damned by Adam LG Nevill that looks very promising.

Trinalor –

In keeping with the traditions of dressing up in scary costumes and creating mischief, my recommended reading for Halloween is Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak.

A little boy dressed up in his wolf costume wreaks havoc throughout the house. For his naughtiness, he is sent to his room without dinner. But his adventures have only just begun as he travels to a land inhabited by big monsters with big teeth and big claws.

Although the scariest part of this children’s classic is when the little boy talks back to his mom, the charming story and wonderful illustrations make it a fun read for all ages.

Medora –

I love Flights: Extreme Visions of Fantasy, a short story collection by a variety of authors. Some are fantasy, as the title claims, but others are actually horror, and you have to read to find out which ones they are. The Joyce Carol Oates contribution, Six Hypotheses, literally gave me nightmares. I photocopied it out of the library volume, but I have it hidden in a stack of articles for school because it makes me nervous to look at it.

Steven Mosby –

My favourite scary story is an urban legend. There are a few different variations on it, but my favourite is this one.

A girl’s parents have gone away for the night and left her in the house by herself, with only the family dog for company. That evening, she checks all the doors and windows are locked, then goes to sleep in her parents’ room with the dog at the side of the bed. Some time in the night, she wakes up and hears the shower dripping in the en-suite. Frightened, she puts her hand out and strokes the dog’s head in the dark, and it licks her hand reassuringly. She goes back to sleep. The next morning, she wakes up, stretches, and heads into the bathroom, where she finds the real source of the dripping. The dog’s corpse is hanging in the shower, blood tapping down.

I like the story to end there, but often it continues a little. The girl finds a note by the side of the bed that says ‘humans can lick too’, which gives the story its common title. And sometimes she runs from the bedroom in shock and the intruder leaps out of a room to one side…

Pretending that last event doesn’t happen, the tale is a ‘lucky escape’ story, an element it shares with a number of other urban legends. The vet who frantically calls a woman and tells her to get out now, because the object her dog was choking on is a man’s finger, and he might still be in the house with her. Or the student who creeps into her shared room late at night, then wakes to find her room-mate butchered and – written in blood on the wall – the message ‘aren’t you glad you didn’t turn on the light?’.

They’re unbelievable stories, of course. (Unlike the one about the couple who repeatedly complain about the stench in their hotel room, then eventually find a dead body hidden underneath – that’s based on truth). And perhaps it’s strange I find the ‘humans can lick too’ story so creepy, because, in its basic form, the danger is all in the story’s past; the horror stems from looking back and re-evaluating events rather than facing some terrible threat in the present. There’s the strange behaviour of the psycho – allowing himself to be stroked; licking the girl’s hand – but what makes it doubly frightening is the fact that it’s already happened and she’s only just realising. (And of course, we’re putting it together at the same time). Maybe it’s also partly down to a sense of powerlessness: the notion that, if we don’t recognise a danger, how can we protect ourselves from it?

And I find that far more scary than the idea of a monster attacking the hero, which very quickly descends into an action scene. You see the effect deployed in more subtle horror movies from time to time (the recent ‘so … who was that in bed with me then?’ scene in The Orphanage springs to mind), but perhaps in fiction it’s more suited to short stories than novels, which, arguably, is where the horror genre is most at home. I remember being frightened the first time I read H.P. Lovecraft’s The Whisperer in Darkness. The chill didn’t come from all the winged aliens, but from the realisation, at the end, of who the narrator had actually been speaking to all along. And also, though billed as non-fiction, some of the vignettes in Whitley Strieber’s Communion set my hair on end. Beyond the ‘uncanny valley’ effect of strange faces peering round doorframes – and, of course, the anal probes – the most disturbing part for me was a simple re-evaluation, as Strieber worked back through various strange events in his past and began to see them in a new light. Specifically, a dream he had – a nightmare – about being in his car, screaming, trying to get it to start, while a demon pressed its face to the side window. As you begin to think about what might have been really going on there (if ‘really’ is the right word), it’s unnerving in a similar way to the licking story: a shock in the present casting previously innocent events in a new, more sinister light.

For me, the scariest horror stories work in that way. They’re like looking down and seeing a huge spider resting on your leg. The chill isn’t just in realising something’s there and you’re unsafe. It’s understanding that it’s been there for a while, and that you were never safe and you just didn’t realise.

_{Steven Mosby is the author of The Third Person, The Cutting Crew, The 50/50 Killer and Cry For Help}.

Damon –

The Halloween book that I am enjoying this season is Goodnight Goon (Halloween books are sometimes tough for the kids because you want them to be interesting if not outright scary. I do not need a book that is going to make my kids come crying in the middle of the dark or give them bad dreams. Goodnight Goon gets the whole formula correct. Michael Rex gives us illustrations that are spooky, not scary or gruesome which is perfect for the kids to look at before they go to bed. Goodnight Goon is a parody on the classic Goodnight Moon that I am sure most of us have either read as children or read to our own kids. This also means that the children are familiar with the actual story, which seems to make the children more at home with it as well. My children have read it many times already since first getting it last month. This should become a Halloween classic for the little ones.

Jay –

When you’re the trail you either get left out because everything is already taken or you are about to get the rock and going to posterize somebody. Trinalor picked Where the Wild Things Are which for me is probably Speculative Fiction ground zero for me – should be and probably is on every kid’s shelf.

This year Halloween falls on a weekend…

Honestly, the first thing I think of when considering Halloween is a song, My Mind Playin Tricks on Me by the Geto Boys. It was that song that much like Fresh Prince and Jazzy Jeff’s Summer Time got constant seasonal rotation every year. The 90’s were an odd time where I lived, I can’t say anybody was straight street, but everybody was, and it created this wild west like atmosphere in the town I lived in that in a way felt only right in Halloween but perpetuated the masquerade for the whole year . This song is good times that reminds me of a time that shifts from being the realest time of my life and looking back, the most surreal. I lived in a town full of characters – and this song was its theme.

I live by the sword
I take my boys everywhere I go
Because I’m paranoid
I keep looking over my shoulder and peeping around corners
My mind is playing tricks on me

I’m a Simpsons fan. Really. I am. In a way that can apply when I tell you I may be the biggest fan on the planet who has only watched a dozen-and-a-half episodes in the last decade. I was there when Fox was kind of this upstart that was half-joke being headlined by Homer, Al Bundy, Tom Hanson, and a tune “Whatcha gonna do, whatcha gonna do when they come for you”. The thing was. . . People were watching and when they got the NFL it only made that official. I was in the generation where kids were getting d-hall in middle school for flexing the “I’m Bart Simpson, who the hell are you” T-shirt. Among those rare actually viewings – otherwise watched due to appearances of people like Alan Moore – are all the Halloween episodes. It’s a bit like animated 30’s Weird Tales (though they are actually parodying a lot of material from bit later – like from EC Comics and Rod Serling Twilight Zone) and it’s just become a bit of an institution for me and one of those people who usually looks very strangely at people who have those televisions seasonal television rituals (like watching a parade; people, you are watching other people take an official and organized walk – umm. . . what‘s wrong with you – you‘re scaring me!?). These things are fun a bit disturbing and isn’t down with Kang and Kodos?

I don’t know about anybody else, but if not at the House of Mystery you’ll find me at the Tree House of Horror.

From a reading standpoint I kind of avoided picking just a recent work that could be called the most outstanding horror work I can think of – something like Mark Danielewski’s House of Leaves or a collection by Thomas Ligotti and wanted to for something a it more directly Halloween orientated and came up with a novel and a bit of sequential goodness. First is Scary Godmother by Jill Thompson. Many people may know Thompson from her arc in Gaiman’s Sandman or have seen Scary Godmother in other media but the comics/books are very nice and feature Thompson’s beautiful art – she’s a top shelf artist and for me anytime she does anything it’s a bit of an event (like Vess in that way). These books are basically based on Halloween itself (and it’s creatures) and are treats themselves – and good family fun! My next pick is by one of fiction’s masters, Ray Bradbury. Much of Bradbury’s work is based on childhood whimsy, and his Halloween Tree is in that mode. A group of friends go out trick-or-treating only to find out they are going on a missions to save a friends life and world/cultural/time traveling tour of Halloween? As usual Bradbury makes you smile and regret; Nostalgic scaring mixed with delightful memories of youth? If there ever was a writer born to write a Halloween story, it’s Bradbury.

That’s it folks! I want to thank the BookSpot Central contributors and special guest, author Steve Mosby (thanks Brian!), for pitching in!

To our readers – be on the lookout for our next Holiday feature where we will share our favorite dinner table scenes (no Red Wedding allowed)!

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