Harper Collins
This book has been in my family for generations, or like 25 years.
Did you know that they recently republished SSTTITD without Gammell's illustrations? A minor travesty...
In truth, this book mostly sucks, at least as a book of stories. The tales are poorly written (or, retold) and nonsensical. Rather than bering folkloric (as claimed by the author), I honestly believe that Alvin Schwartz probably just made the majority of them up.
Where it doesn't disappoint is in Gammell's illustrations, still just as morbid, deformed, grotesque and absolutely bleak as I remember as a kid. Thinking back now, Gammell's SSTTITD illustrations were my earliest and profoundest experience (nay communion) with horror as a genre.
And if you owned this book as a kid it's a testament to the awesomeness of your parents, you should thank them, I'd go so far as to say that you are probably not a pussy because your parents exposed you to this book.
But Harper Collins went and replaced the classic, surreal, ghoulish, indelible, nightmarish Gammell illustrations with pablum; soft, cutesy, non threatening pablum.
A minor travesty...pussies.
2 comments:
These books scared the shit out of me as a kid, but I think it had more do to with the artwork. I remember one drawing of a sausage. There was an arm protruding from the sausage & the hand was holding fork which had a piece of the sausage on it. Samsara. Minor travesty, indeed.
Yo Andy!
That story is called Wonderful Sausage...
and here's the illustration, wonderful indeed,
http://joeymarsilio.blogspot.com/2013/04/the-official-more-scary-stories-to-tell.html
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