Sheila Ray the Brave

Written by: Kevin Henkes

First line: Sheila Rae wasn't afraid of anything. 

Why you should read this book: Sheila Rae demonstrates her uncommon bravery in the face of common childhood terrors such as thunder and lightning and scary dogs, and even imagines scarier things when confronted with common objects. However, her commitment to proving her utter lack of fear leads to hubris and hamartia as she sets out to prove herself and ends up discovering the true meaning of fear. Fortunately, her little sister Louise has the solution, and the path out of fear. 

Why you shouldn't read this book: It's a cute book but apparently if you are a humorless puritan with zero imagination, you might find Sheila Rae's imagination unpalatable (always read the one-star Amazon reviews to locate the dregs of humanity). 

Buy Sheila Rae the Brave from Amazon.

My Mama Says There Aren't Any Zombies, Ghosts, Vampires, Creatures, Demons, Monsters, Fiends, Goblins, or Things

Written by: Judith Viorst and Kay Chorao

First line: My mama says there isn't an mean-eyed monster with long slimy hair and pointy claws going scritchy-scratch, scritchy-scritchy-scratch outside my window.

Why you should read this book: In a child's eyes, the world is full of terrors and wonder, and our child narrator has ample sensory evidence for the existence of a whole pantheon of monsters lurking just at the edge of human perception. In every case, the child's perception allows him to see or hear the horrors of his world, and in every case his mother denies any foundation for his reality. But the observant child notes a litany of mistakes his mother makes on a regular basis, and a long list of things she's definitely wrong about, so how can he possibly trust her when she reassures him that monsters aren't real?

Why you shouldn't read this book: You need your kid to believe that you're infallible.

Auggie and Me: Three Wonder Stories

Written by: RJ Palacio

First line: Okay, okay, okay.

Why you should read this book: A companion to the popular novel Wonder, this books tells the parallel stories of Julian, Christopher, and Charlotte, three kids whose lives were impacted by Auggie's. We learn that Auggie's bully, Julian, suffers from nightmares, and that his response to Auggie is born of shame and fear; Christopher learns the importance of sticking by friends through his own relationship with Auggie; and Charlotte learns to see the world and the idea of popularity through a new lens.Written with wisdom and compassion, Palacio's stories show kids' real inner worlds.

Why you shouldn't read this book: Although these stories all stand alone, it probably makes more sense to read the first book first. 

The Gift of Fear: Survival Signs That Protect Us from Violence

Written by: Gavin de Becker

First line: He had probably been watching her for a while.

Why you should read this book: Published almost a quarter century ago, this is still the definitive work on the subject of protecting oneself from violence by learning to recognize indicators that a person intends to enact violence upon your person before you get hurt. With detailed explanations of how to assess and evaluate threats on the fly, anecdotal examples from de Becker's years as a security expert, and a clear writing style, he conveys the importance of understanding and trusting ones own instinct and prizing personal safety. An extremely important book, recommended to anyone with any experience of violence in their lives, which is likely the vast majority of the population.

Why you shouldn't read this book: You're prone to violence but you don't want anyone to know.

 

Red Clocks

Written by: Leni Zumas

First line: Born in 1841 on a Faroese sheep farm.

Why you should read this book: In a muted nightmare America, abortion and in vitro fertilization have been outlawed and adoption is only legal for two-parent households in a book that highlights ways in which women are harmed by anti-woman legislation masquerading as pro-child values. Ro, single and middle aged desperately wants a baby but can't conceive; her teenage student Mattie finds herself trapped in an unwanted pregnancy; Susan has a traditional marriage and a traditional family but feels miserable in her life; Gin, an herbalist with a nontraditional life and worldview, is a woman with the power to help women, may also be the one who pays the steepest price. The personal is political in a novel that highlights how impersonal politics personally impact individuals.

Why you shouldn't read this book: The people who aren't going to read or understand the book are the people who most need to read this book. If you think there's any legitimacy to the phrase "fetal personhood," you probably won't pick it up, but you might learn something about actual personhood if you did.

Among the Dolls

Written by: William Sleator

First line: The poplar trees along the roadside shimmered in a light breeze, and there was hardly a nip in the autumn air.

Why you should read this book: Incensed that her parents bought her a creepy antique dollhouse for her birthday instead of the new ten-speed bike she desires, Vicky begins emotionally abusing the dolls by using them to act out a terrible family life for her own amusement. Vicky's own home life becomes less and less optimal until one day she finds herself magically transported into the world of the dollhouse, whose occupants, well aware that Vicky is the cause of all their misery, intend to take out their revenge on her person. She has very little time to discover the dollhouse's secrets and escape from the terrible world of her own making.

Why you shouldn't read this book: Probably not a good choice for kids who have witnessed domestic violence.

Parachute

Written by: Danny Parker and Matt Ottley

First line: Toby always wore a parachute.

Why you should read this book: A little boy deals with his fear of heights (in his mind, the height of the step stool he uses to see into the bathroom mirror is terrifyingly intense) by wearing a parachute at all times, just in case. When he sees a cat stuck up a tree, however, he is able to conquer his fears in service of another creature. Soon he sees that he doesn't actually need the parachute at all.

Why you shouldn't read this book: If he's scared of heights, why the heck is he sleeping in the top bunk?

Gaijin: American Prisoner of War

Written by: Matt Faulkner

First line: Koji—why don't you turn on the radio while we do dishes?

Why you should read this book: Prior to the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Japanese-American teen Koji Miyamoto never really thought about being biracial, but suddenly he looks like the enemy, and the people around him begin treating him like the enemy; he's even worried that his own father might actually be the enemy. He and his mother are surprised when he is called to an internment camp, and his mother decides to go with him, even though she is white, because she can't let him go alone. In camp, Koji faces another type of discrimination, because he's not Japanese enough, but, despite the betrayal by his government, Koji does his best to become an honorable person, and the book carries him through the end of the war and his reunification with his Japanese father.

Why you shouldn't read this book: You're still in denial about what the American government did to its own citizens during World War II.

The Ring Bearer

Written by: Floyd Cooper

First line: Mama is having a wedding, and Jackson is worried.

Why you should read this book: A really sweet story, lovingly illustrated, merges a small child's general anxiety about the changes that will come with a new blended family and his specific anxiety about tripping and falling down in front of everyone he knows while he participates in the wedding ceremony. Jackson is a warm-hearted little boy who likes his mother's fiancé and wants to be a good big brother to his new stepsister, Sophie, and the story is resolved when it is Sophie, and not Jackson, who ends up tripping while walking down the aisle, and Jackson throws caution (and the rings) to the wind in order to catch the little girl. The kids I read this story to were worried about the rings, but I let them in on the secret that the rings are sewed to the pillow because adults expect little kids to trip and fall down, and they felt much better.

Why you shouldn't read this book: You hate your stepfamily.

Ghosts

Written by: Raine Telgemeier

First line: One Double-Back combo, one Cheeseback with fries, a Double Napoleon shake...

Why you should read this book: Cat loves her little sister Maya, and she knows the family's move from sunny southern California to the foggy, windswept northern part of the state is essential to keep Maya's cystic fibrosis under control, but she doesn't like the gray skies or the ubiquitous ghost stories that cast a constant shadow over her new home in Bahía de la Luna. When her new neighbor, Carlos, insists, and then proves Bahía de la Luna's ghost stories are all real, and her new friends want her to participate in the town's extensive Day of the Dead festivities, Cat feels nothing but fear of death. Maya and the others embrace the presence of the dead, but Cat will need more context to bridge the gap between the memory of her grandmother and the possibility of her sister's demise.

Why you shouldn't read this book: People who don't need to dwell on ways in which being dead might be better than being alive.

Last Look

Written by: Charles Burns

First line: This is the only part I'll remember.

Why you should read this book: The X'ed Out trilogy is collected here in one volume, which is good news for readers, because I can't imagine how frustrating it must have been to read this story in pieces without its conclusion. It's the kind of book where you're trying to piece the story together right up until the last couple pages, when all the threads comes together, and then you have to start again at the beginning so you can read it and understand it at the same time. Our protagonist, Doug, seems trapped in his relationships in the real world even as he bounces over and over again back to a hallucinatory nightmare landscape that mirrors his deepest fears with cunning distortion.

Why you shouldn't read this book: You can pinpoint the exact moment in your life when everything went wrong and you can't stop reliving it. 

Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl

Written by: Anne Frank

First line: On Friday, June 12th, I woke up at six o'clock and no wonder; it was my birthday.

Why you should read this book: The first time I read this book, I was much younger than Anne, probably about seven or eight, as Jewish parents begin their children's education about the Holocaust pretty young, and I was a voracious reader, and I have read it dozens of times over the years. This time, I shared it with my twelve-year-old stepdaughter, and got to see Anne's world fresh through another pair of eyes. This story of a thoughtful adolescent who died believing that people were basically good, despite all the terror and hardship she encountered during World War II, should be required reading for every young person, and quite a few adults.

Why you shouldn't read this book: You're a Nazi, in which case you should also get off my page and go think about what you've done and how your xenophobic, self-centered beliefs make the world a more terrible place, and then, when you get your head on straight enough to realize that fascism and white supremacy are objectively not OK, you should come back and read this book.

Spike, the Mixed-up Monster

Written by: Susan Hood and Melissa Sweet

First line: Spike was a monster.

Why you should read this book: Spike is, in fact, an axolotl, an endangered type of salamander, who may look monstrous up close, but is hardly visible from far away, being smaller than many creatures in his environment. In this book, Spike tries to be terrifying but succeeds only in delighting his neighbors with his cuteness. Then along comes a real monster, the dangerous gila monster: can Spike make himself scary enough to save his friends?

Why you shouldn't read this book: You're a very grouchy ladybug.

Batman Arkham Scarecrow

Edited by: Whitney Ellsworth et al. 

First line: Across the Batman's horizon moves a new and terrible figure--a fantastic figure of burlap and straw with a brain--cunning and distorted!

Why you should read this book: This retrospective volume collects a dozen comics spanning the past eight decades, all featuring the protagonist Scarecrow, a demented supervillain obsessed with fear. Motivated primarily by money, which he wants to buy more books and persuade others to stop picking on him, the Scarecrow is a psychology professor with, apparently, a strong background in chemistry, who uses drugs to induce fear in his victims (and, in one story, to completely eradicate their fear). Batman, the man who has mastered fear and counts it among his arsenal, defeats him again and again, in a variety of stories and styles that highlight the development of the character and medium over the years.

Why you shouldn't read this book: Some of that Comic Code era storytelling is pretty castrated.

The Gigantic Beard That Was Evil

Written by: Stephen Collins

First line: Beneath the skin of everything is something nobody can know.

Why you should read this book: Dave, an almost completely ordinary man, lives an almost completely ordinary life on an island called Here, where perfect conformity isn't just a dictate, it's a way of life, until the day his previously nonexistent beard goes crazy and starts to take over. All the island's hairdressers and all the island's gardeners can't keep this irrational and non-conforming facial hair in check, and eventually Dave must capitulate to the beard, because there is no controlling it. Meanwhile, everyone on the island will be affected by the chaos of the beard incident, learning that a little uncontrolled chaos can be a positive thing for a society.

Why you shouldn't read this book: You strongly believe that unconventional hairstyles disrupt not only the learning process, but the stability of society in general. 

Ira Sleeps Over

Written by: Bernard Waber

First line: I was invited to sleep at Reggie's house!

Why you should read this book: A boy's anticipation of his first sleepover is marred by the question of whether or not his friend will laugh at him for still sleeping with a teddy bear. His parents insist he won't; he sister claims he will. In the end, Ira sees that he and Reggie see eye to eye on the teddy bear question.

Why you shouldn't read this book: You don't allow your children the comfort of a primary love object; they must face the dark on their own.

Without You, There Is No Us: My Time with the Sons of North Korea's Elite

Written by: Suki Kim

First line: Time there seemed to pass differently.

Why you should read this book: I know I'm not the only American fascinated, bewildered, and curious about life in North Korea, as evidenced by the number of months I had to wait for this library reserve, and it did not disappoint in terms of sheer, mind-blowing insanity, and its descriptions of a world that is hardly imaginable. Suki Kim, born in South Korea, immigrated to America at age 13, and was also curious about the closed country where some of her relatives had disappeared before she was born, so she disguised herself as a Christian missionary among a group of Christian missionaries disguised as teachers, and spent two semesters living in a virtual prison while gathering intelligence about the most closed country on the planet. I devoured this fascinating narrative in a few hours and highly recommend it to anyone with the least interest in North Korea, oppressive regimes, the meaning of freedom, human rights, or brainwashing an entire country.

Why you shouldn't read this book: You are a Christian missionary disguised as a teacher for the purpose of maintaining a presence in North Korea in case the country should ever open up enough to enable you to proselytize there.

The Ingoldsby Legends

Written by: Richard Harris Barham

First line: One the lone bleak moor, At the midnight hour, Beneath the Gallows Tree, Hand in hand The Murderers stand By one, by two, by three!

Why you should read this book: You really don't realize how old some legends are until you read them in an almost-200-year-old book of laborious poetry. People in the nineteenth century were probably really creeped out by these rhyming stories of witches, ghosts, demons, and various other dead and creepy things, although modern readers will most likely find them quaint at best. An interesting slice of the history of popular culture.

Why you shouldn't read this book: The writing is frankly tedious. Plus, unless you have a fair grasp of nineteenth century vernacular and some idea about English history, a lot of it will just be perplexing.

Calamity Jack

Written by: Shannon and Dean Hale

First line: I think of myself as a criminal mastermind...with an unfortunate amount of bad luck.

Why you should read this book: It's basically a sequel to the delightful Rapunzel's Revenge, with Jack (he of beanstalk climbing fame) at the story's center. This book begins long before he meets Rapunzel, setting him up as a bit of a rapscallion whose mischievous tendencies develop out of necessity of living life impoverished in the big city, skipping over the bit covered in the first book, and then jumping back into the story as Jack and Rapunzel return to the city, with Jack wondering how to confess his love to the dynamic, hair-wielding woman. Together, they take on a legion of evil, man-eating giants and restore order to their civilization.

Why you shouldn't read this book: Not quite as clever or fun as the first one, but still a good read.

The Plot

Written by: Will Eisner

First line: Whenever one group of people is taught to hate another, a lie is created to inflame the hatred and justify a plot.

Why you should read this book: Eisner poured his soul and a large portion of the last part of his life into this historical graphic story, which details the deceitful origins of the hateful, anti-Semitic forgery, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. From its late nineteenth century inception as a fraud plagiarized from earlier French revolutionary documents for the purpose of halting modernity in czarist Russia while justifying pogroms and other racist behaviors, these lies have been associated with the perpetuation of evil throughout the years; the book seeks to debunk the pervasive attitudes that have allowed a demonstrable hoax to take on a life of its own, despite ample proof that it is nothing more than a lie enjoyed by people who love to hate. Eisner originally felt certain that if he could only compile all the data into one easy-to-read volume, he could kill The Protocols once and for all, but eventually he ended the book with the realization that anti-Semitism is a choice made by racists whose confirmation bias prevents them from understanding the evidence, and it is justified, rather than inspired, by the document.

Why you shouldn’t read this book: The Dunning-Kreuger effect.