Do children actually like reading horror stories?
According to a recent post (Apr 12, 2022) at BookTrust, they actually do! In a fascinating article about scary books for 8-12 year olds, Jennifer Killick, author of Crater Lake and Dread Wood, shares several of her favourite scary children's books. As she points out, some of them (e.g., The Hunger Games) do not technically fit into the horror genre but do contain elements of horror. She goes on to list such books as Below Zero by Dan Smith, The Bigwoof Conspiracy by Dashe Roberts, Christmas Dinner of Souls by Ross Montgomery and Monstrous Devices by Damien Love. There is also a manga book listed, which is also interesting as we have observed previously that manga is becoming increasingly attractive to younger audiences.
So, what can we take from this? We think for one, that the reading tastes of younger children have changed quite a lot over the last few decades and the likes of heroines like Alice and Dorothy are now possibly far too tame for modern audiences. Children are inevitably exposed to crime/horror TV and streaming in many households these days, even if only briefly, and it is therefore not surprising that they would come to consider reading horror stories as fairly normal at ever younger ages. Perhaps this is something that our own client authors might look at, for as Jennifer Killick points out, the space is currently not at all crowded.
For the full article go to the link below: