My son’s 8th grade English teacher assigns a book for the class to read every month. For October she’s letting each individual student pick whatever they want, so long as it’s in the horror / spooky / Halloween-type genre.
What’s a good scary book appropriate for a 13yo boy? Been a while since I was that age….
by OCKingsFan
6 Comments
I recently read and enjoyed the middle-grade horror Scarewaves by Travis Henderson. It’s very reminiscent of online horror and creepypasta – Henderson is a horror artist of some online fame – so if your kid is into that sort of thing, he might like it! There’s a lot of more or less classic ones like R. L. Stine, whose large catalogue would give your kid a lot of options.
Also I don’t know if your kid would want to read short stories or if the teacher would accept it for the assignment, but I liked the collection Hide and Don’t Seek by Anica Mrose Rissi, also middle-grade!
There is the series of books called Goosebumps by R. L Stine. “The protagonists in these stories are teens or pre-teens who find themselves in frightening circumstances, often involving the supernatural, the paranormal or the occult”. It’s children’s book so it’s appropriate for a 13 years old but some of them are a bit scarier than other!
Anything by Mary Downing Hahn or Dan Poblicki
I really enjoyed “Rot and Ruin” by Jonathan Maberry at that age. This book teeters on being young adult but is appropriate for most eighth graders (I read and enjoyed the series in middle school). It’s a post apocalyptic zombie book and does contain gore, death, and human trafficking (most other ideas are alluded to but never explicitly detailed). The characters are compelling though and I mean what’s cooler than a samurai zombie slayer? Feel free to pm me if you would like to know more
Coraline by Neil Gaiman, Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark by Alvin Schwartz, The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman, Goosebumps: Welcome to Dead House by R.L. Stine, The Monstrumologist by Rick Yancey
*The Ash House* by Angharad Walker
*Thirteens* by Kate Alice Marshall