Scary Stories - The documentary

 

The American Library Association's Office of Intellectual Freedom hosted a Scary Stories watch party on Friday night in honor of Banned Books Week. Not to be confused with the movie Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark which was based on the books, Scary Stories is a documentary about the series, and its censors.

Coming in at number 24 on the list of the Top 100 Most Banned Books of the decade (2010-2019) Alvin Schwartz's series of books was especially popular when it was first published in the 1980s and early 1990s. It was also a popular target of the censors who believed the books were too scary for young readers. The Satanic Panic  of the 1980s and early 90s, based on false accounts of ritualistic abuse, no doubt was a big part of what made this series a mark for book banners.

The books had a real cult following. For those who loved the books the illustrations by Stephen Gammell were an important part of the "Scary Stories" experience, they were also part of the package that made the books so objectionable to their censors. 

This documentary includes interviews with the author's family, librarians and educators who defended the book, folklorists, and anthropologists as well as interviews with the censors. It ends with a conversation between Peter Schwartz (son of the author) and one of the censors (who still claims that the books are too scary for children).

As one who researches book banning I have always been intrigued by these books. As a baby boomer I had already outgrown this series by the time of its heyday so it wasn't a touchstone for me the way it was for late Gen Xers or Millennials. I remember buying a copy of the first of the series out of curiosity perhaps about 20 years ago. After I read a few stories I put it down and didn't finish it. I didn't find the tales from my own childhood - old urban legends and ghost stories told at campouts and sleepovers - to be especially scary or interesting to the adult me. However, the fact that I remember them being told to me as a child makes banning the books especially ironic. These stories have a long oral tradition and will be told, with or without the books, for a long time to come. I think this also speaks to the question of age appropriateness. We told the stories because we wanted to be scared, it was a form of entertainment for us. The stories are not too scary for children. Children are in fact exactly the right audience for them.