If you’re a child of the 80s, you probably remember the Scary Stories trilogy by Alvin Schwartz. The stories themselves were fairly tame, and it was Stephen Gammell’s illustrations that really made the books memorable. When I was a third grader, those nightmarish landscapes and grotesque figures were absolutely terrifying (the illustrations for “The Haunted House,” “The Dream,” and “Someone Fell from Aloft” were particularly spooky), and they’re still pretty damn unsettling 20 years later.
To celebrate the 30th anniversary of the publication of the first Scary Stories book, HarperCollins commissioned new artwork by Brett Helquist. The result is…underwhelming to say the least. Helquist is a fine artist, but his work lacks the distinctive horror of Gammell’s. Adventures in Poor Taste has a nice piece that compares and contrasts the two sets of illustrations, so you can see for yourselves just how different they are.
I have no idea why HarperCollins decided to tamper with something so iconic. The cynic in me wonders if it isn’t a deliberate attempt to sanitize the books (they were, after all, frequently challenged by outraged parents who wanted to keep them out of school libraries). Helquist’s work is safe and anodyne, and I doubt it will stick in people’s minds like Gammell’s did.
I’m glad I kept my copies of the original editions!
Codex Lochianus 