Young Spooks!

Sometimes you find a children’s book that makes you go “Damn, I wish I was still a child so I could have an excuse to read this book.” Lucky for me I can just read them and pretend it’s bookseller-research. Why don’t they have one of these for adults?! 

Mothman, Bigfoot, UFOs, the Nazca Lines, Victorian seances: The Big Book of Mysteries has it all! It doesn’t have the answers, of course. So when your kid asks “Daddy, whatever happened to the Knights Templar?” you won’t necessarily be able to find an answer here, but what you will find is beautifully illustrated double page spread after double page spread, littered with facts, questions, possible explanations, and genuine headscratchers.

Spooky season isn’t all about scary tricks, it’s also about delicious treats. And The Café at the Edge of the Woods serves lots of fine cuisine. At least, that’s what Rene the chef thinks, until her customers start requesting disgusting dishes, like pickled bats, battered mice and maggot fondue!

Championing the power of teamwork, Rene and her new waiter Glumfoot conjure a cunning plan together, meeting even the oddest of orders from the spookiest of customers. Mickey Please’s unique, charming illustrations and storytelling make this picture-book a perfect gentle and cosy spooky season read. 

Of course, who would write the best spooky season kids book if not the one, the only, the Jon Klassen? Based on a folk tale he found in an Alaskan library, no less. It goes without saying the illustrations are spectacular, creepy, minimalist yet evocative. And the story is genuinely creepy: a young girl called Otilla runs away to a house in the woods where a disembodied skull lives.

The design of this typically sumptuous picture book from Oliver Jeffers is simply ingenious – far from straying into pleasing the adults more than the kids, it is at its heart a simple and eminently loveable story about the things we cannot see, the things we fear and the things we maybe don’t want to see. Join our young host for a tour of a gorgeously gothic house in which there can’t actually be any ghosts hiding… can there?

Flavia Z. Drago has been seriously delivering on the spooky season picture books over the last few years. We got Gustavo, the Shy Ghost and Leila, the perfect witch. Now, at last, Vlad! The fabulous vampire! Fashion is his passion. But he’s also got a secret – his neon pink cheeks. Not very befitting for a vampire… or is it?

Here it is: the mother of all pop-up books. Is it possible to have a “cult classic” kids book? If so, this is it. Scaring and enthralling since the late 70s, this is one to beguile growns and young-uns alike.

Ok, yes, we’re bat enthusiasts at this shop. But for good reason! As such the latest instalment in the “If I Had A…” series is right up our spooky street. Come for the bat facts, stay for the nocturnal nonsense.

It’s about time! FINALLY the work of the immortal RL Stine is getting the revamp it deserves. Alongside fresh reprints of some of the classics is this series of RL Stine graphic novel adaptations starting with the 1995 classic The Haunted Mask. Sentient masks, weird powers, a haunted mansion in a non-specific midwestern town. This is the exact midpoint on the Scooby Doo to Stephen King pipeline. Next step, Ray Bradbury.

Witches, vegetable growing contests, petty revenge, a giant pig. This comic has it all! Alcatoe is the only witch in Plum Woods and pretty keen to get more mischief into neighbouring Plum Town… by any means necessary. Macabre brilliance for fans of Hilda.

Kevin Aurelius is just a regular ten year old, an ordinary kid who also happens to be immortal, has fangs, and is a vampire! When Kevin and his vampire family end up unexpectedly stranded in the sleepy town of Lower Drudging, they decide to host a carnival, and their disruptive actions uncover monstrous secrets that the town has kept hiding. Secrets that are very old, very much alive and extremely hungry… With brilliantly spooky illustrations throughout, this is a fun-packed story filled with monsters, vampires and a dog who is actually a bat.

This is the perfect spooky book for puzzle-loving mystery solvers! When Amity runs into the Badwell Woods, with her brother Claude following behind her, they are lured into a mysterious house with three storeys and no stairs. It’s only when they are trapped inside that they realise that the house has been frozen in time since the 1930s, and that the rooms inside the house have rearranged themselves into a giant Rubik’s cube. The only way to escape is to work together and solve the mystery of the house. This is a thrilling haunted house story, with all the puzzles and adventures of an escape-room!

A kid who can speak to dead people, a 500 year old cursed skull, mysteriously missing parents. It’s a whirlwind adventure deeply drenched in the macabre. FFO Lemony Snicket and things that give a generally Tim Burton-y vibe, for readers relatively morbid readers aged 9+