Here's a place to discuss the possibility of "horror" as something enjoyable and beneficial for young listeners and readers. By "young" I mean, for purposes of this discussion, age 12 or younger.

It is clear to me that it's wrong to try really to terrify or horrify children with visual or written materials. I believe one of M. R. James's stories deals with an old bachelor who enjoys hurting children emotionally and imaginatively with slides of horrible imaginary scenes.

Everyone will, I trust, agree about that.

Nor am I thinking of the genre of oral yarns -- campfire tales -- that kids often like to tell each other, or at least many of them did, I suppose, when I was a youngster 60 years ago. I wouldn't be surprised if these have been driven out by much nastier stories derived, perhaps at second- or third-hand, from movies and TV. I used to be pretty good at this as a kid making up stories for my cousins, or so a perhaps self-flattering memory suggests.

Perhaps the best example of what I do mean is George MacDonald's The Princess and the Goblin. In this book, the little girl can hear the sound of goblins delving underground, and, at last, they burst into the castle where she lives. She has a guardian, her "Grandmother," and a loyal protector, a boy a little older than she who is familiar with the mines.

"Horror" might not be the best word for what I'm driving at, but "spooky" isn't the right word either because I'm not necessarily thinking about "spooks" -- ghosts.

I don't know if there's much to discuss on this, but here's a place, if so.

I would say the horror elements of the sequel, THE PRINCESS AND CURDIE, are at least slightly stronger.

This foreshadows a trend in children's book series - that the author ramps up the horror as he/she writes sequels. Perhaps on the theory that the children will grow older. Or perhaps because success gives more freedom to write what one really wants rather than pander to a children's market. Arguably, Lewis Carroll, J.K. Rowling, J.R.R. Tolkien, and C.S. Lewis, have all done this, to some extent of another. Maybe E. Nesbit too -- my memory of the series is a bit fuzzy, but I vaguely remember scary bits in "The Story of the Amulet", third in series.

THE THIRTEEN CLOCKS by James Thurber, features at the climax an indescribable horror (I forget its name) that moves "like monkeys and like shadows".

THE HUNTING OF THE SNARK, by Lewis Carroll, ends on a striking note of horror.

That both are basically works of nonsense, does not entirely remove the horror of the unknown that is evoked. Or maybe it enhances it.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 15 Jan 24 | 04:16PM by Platypus.