Thus for me, Ghosts! Ghostly Tales from Folklore leaves almost everything to be desired and therefore of course and naturally only a one star rating (and indeed, that I do appreciate Alvin Schwartz’ short bibliography, this certainly does not change me absolutely despising both text and images of Ghosts! Ghostly Tales from Folklore and will also not ever induce me to up my rating, as I personally just cannot fathom more than one star for Ghosts! Ghostly Tales from Folklore).įor folk tales and scary stories, especially ones taken from legends that have been making the rounds for many years, Alvin Schwartz is always my guy.
Because in my humble opinion, NONE of Schwartz’ stories for Ghosts! Ghostly Tales from Folklore are even remotely uncanny and chilling enough for my tastes (and like ghost stories are actually and of course supposed to be) but are instead mundanely, tediously penned, with no descriptive flair whatsoever and imbued with words so simplistic and basic that Ghosts! Ghostly Tales from Folklore has not even once been in any manner even somewhat thrilling (and yes, both for me as an adult reader but also very much so for my inner child), a reading experience absolutely tediously yawn-inducing (and so much so that reading the 64 pages of Ghosts! Ghostly Tales from Folklore has in fact rather felt like I was needing to plough through some textbook containing nothing of reading interest whatsoever).Īnd with regard to Victoria Chess’ artwork, well, even though the illustrations are colourful, the actual pictures themselves, they appear majorly emotionlessly stagnant and the facial expressions of both the depicted humans and the ghosts are rigidly staring and with a visual ugliness that has been absolutely and utterly aesthetically off-putting, and so much so that I can only consider the combination of Alvin Schwartz’ ghost stories and Victoria Chess’s artwork both textually and visually grating and really massively horrible. And yes indeed, the cover image and book title did certainly look appealing enough for me to borrow Ghosts! Ghostly Tales from Folklore on Open Library.īut my positive reading expectations regarding Ghosts! Ghostly Tales from Folklore quite majorly notwithstanding, I have unfortunately and frustratingly been absolutely and totally disappointed and frustrated with and by both Alvin Schwartz’ text (with his retold folklore ghost stories) and equally so with Victoria Chess’s accompanying artwork. Well, I was hoping that Alvin Schwartz’ 1991 Ghosts! Ghostly Tales from Folklore would both textually and stylistically be not only descriptive but also sufficiently creepy and ghastly (as there are indeed quite a goodly number of horrifying traditional stories out there regarding ghosts and/or where the main protagonist of a fairy or folktale is having to face up to and even do actual battle with such terrifying entities like Death, the Devil, vampires, diverse monsters and the like).
0 kommentar(er)
