Literally Disturbed #1: Tales to Keep You Up at Night - Hardcover

Ben H. Winters is the author of of the New York Times bestselling Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters, as well as the novels Android Karenina, Bedbugs, The Last Policeman, and two books for kids: Edgar Award nominee The Secret Life of Ms. Finkleman and The Mystery of the Missing Everything. Ben also writes plays and leads writing workshops for children and adults. He lives with his wife and three kids in Indianapolis, Indiana.

Warm up your spooky voice for these 30 frightful poems on subjects ranging from a monster’s confession (“I eat children. / There, I said it”) to a zombie chase (“They’ll gobble up your brains / and his brains and her brains”). Winters, the best-selling author of the adult title Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters (2009), gives kids just the right amount of scary (i.e., not too scary) for read-alouds at a sleepover or around the campfire—or even solo under the covers with a flashlight. Some of the rhyming poems may leave readers saying, “Hey, that’s no big deal.” But then others will warrant leaving the light on, as in “The Statue”: “Because, somehow, there it was on the mantel— / grinning down at us, wicked and wise— / the monkey with glowing green eyes.” Watkins’ black-and-white full-page illustrations up the creep factor with images of drooling bat fangs, slit-eyed cats, and kids’ mouths open midscream. Sleep tight, don’t let the headless horseman bite. Grades 3-6. --Ann Kelley