The Cabinet of Curiosities: 36 Tales Brief & Sinister

by Stefan Bachmann, Alexander Jansson (Illustrator), Katherine Catmull, Claire Legrand, Emma Trevayne

Overview

A collection of thirty-six forty eerie, mysterious, intriguing, and very short stories by the acclaimed authors Stefan Bachmann, Katherine Catmull, Claire LeGrand, and Emma Trevayne. The Cabinet of Curiosities is perfect for fans of Alvin Schwartz's Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark and anyone who relishes a good creepy tale. Great for reading alone or reading aloud at camp or school!

The book features an introduction and commentary by the authors and black-and-white illustrations throughout.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780062313157
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	05/27/2014
Sold by:	HARPERCOLLINS
Format:	eBook
Pages:	496
Lexile:	790L (what's this?)
File size:	2 MB
Age Range:	8 - 12 Years

About the Author

Stefan Bachmann was born in Colorado and spent most of his childhood in Switzerland, where he graduated from Zurich University of the Arts with degrees in music composition and theory. He is the author of The Peculiar, his debut, which was published to international acclaim when he was nineteen years old. His other books include The Whatnot, A Drop of Night, and Cinders and Sparrows. He is the coauthor (with April Genevieve Tucholke) of The Secret Life of Hidden Places. He lives in Zurich, Switzerland, and Berlin, Germany. 

Katherine Catmull
Cataloger and Philosopher of Scientific Marvels with a particular focus on Jars of Moonlight, Frozen Flowers, Broken Fish Fins, Shiny Things Found on Pavements, and Bringing Cookies to Meetings.

Claire Legrand is the author of Foxheart, The Cavendish Home for Boys and Girls, The Year of Shadows, and Some Kind of Happiness, as well as the New York Times-bestselling young adult fantasy Furyborn and its sequels. She is one of the four authors behind The Cabinet of Curiosities. Claire Legrand lives in New Jersey.

Emma Trevayne
Collector of Auditory Oddities, Whimsical Words, and Cryptic Cyphers. Pays special attention to petrichor, things that glimmer, and mechanical body parts.

Editorial Reviews

07/01/2014
Gr 5–7—Chilling, thrilling, and occasionally startlingly bleak, this collection of short stories is arranged through an ingenious conceit: the tales are housed in the imaginary cabinet of the title. The tales which live in this cabinet of the strange and sinister have been collected (written) by four different curators (authors): Stefan Bachmann, Katherine Catmull, Claire Legrand, and Emma Trevayne. Themes are introduced through letters sent back and forth between the curators, each of whom assumes a different persona, which helps build a world around the stories themselves. Fans of shivery tales will find much to appreciate here, from dolls who love their playmates a little too much to luck that comes at a high price. Taken as a whole, however, a dark, almost nihilistic feeling pervades the stories, bringing the potential audience into question. Short enough to be read aloud, the book invites comparisons to Alvin Schwartz's Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark (HarperCollins, 1981), though readers may leave this cabinet with lingering feelings of dread, rather than the cathartic jolt of a jump scare.—Elisabeth Gattullo Marrocolla, Darien Library, CT

School Library Journal

★ 05/26/2014
This collection of 36 short dark fantasies from Bachmann, Catmull, Legrand, and Trevayne aspires to sit on the same shelf as Alvin Schwartz's Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark and succeeds admirably. The conceit is that the authors are curators of the eponymous cabinet, a magical museum that houses the often-dangerous souvenirs and stories they bring back from their Indiana Jones–like adventures. Among the many delicious tales are Bachmann's "Johnny Knockers," which concerns the fate of a whaling ship after its crew discovers a small boy inside a whale; Legrand's "Mirror, Mirror," which tells of a nasty preteen who looks into a mirror and finds more than she bargained for; Trevayne's "The Circus," the story of a traveling circus's horrifyingly bad luck; and Catmull's "Dark Valentine," which illustrates why you don't want your dead girlfriend contacting you by cellphone. Many of these are moral tales in which nasty children or adults die horribly; others, though, feature perfectly nice people who meet similarly gruesome ends. Readers who enjoy their Halloween chills all year round will find this anthology a delight. Ages 8–12. (May)

Publishers Weekly

A hefty sheaf of chillers—all short enough to share aloud and expertly cast to entice unwary middle graders a step or two into the shadows.” — Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“This collection of 36 short dark fantasies . . . aspires to sit on the same shelf as Alvin Schwartz’s Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark and succeeds admirably. . . . Readers who enjoy their Halloween chills all year round will find this anthology a delight.” — Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“With school dismissed, it’s time for pure pleasure reading. . . . The Cabinet of Curiosities . . . lets readers dip in and out of 36 spine-tingling tales.” — Shelf Awareness for Readers

“The stories are remarkable both for their uniformly high quality and for their distinctness from one another; the abundant atmospherics, including occasional stark black-and-white illustrations, provide a unifying sense of dread.” — The Horn Book

“For readers who have gloried in and graduated from Alvin Schwartz’s collections of scary stories, the tales collected here will provide a deliciously tingly next step.…All are engagingly unsettling in some way, with a select few crossing over into genuine nightmare territory.” — Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books

From the Publisher

With school dismissed, it’s time for pure pleasure reading. . . . The Cabinet of Curiosities . . . lets readers dip in and out of 36 spine-tingling tales.

Shelf Awareness for Readers

For readers who have gloried in and graduated from Alvin Schwartz’s collections of scary stories, the tales collected here will provide a deliciously tingly next step.…All are engagingly unsettling in some way, with a select few crossing over into genuine nightmare territory.

Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books

The stories are remarkable both for their uniformly high quality and for their distinctness from one another; the abundant atmospherics, including occasional stark black-and-white illustrations, provide a unifying sense of dread.

The Horn Book

For readers who have gloried in and graduated from Alvin Schwartz’s collections of scary stories, the tales collected here will provide a deliciously tingly next step.…All are engagingly unsettling in some way, with a select few crossing over into genuine nightmare territory.

Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books

For readers who have gloried in and graduated from Alvin Schwartz’s collections of scary stories, the tales collected here will provide a deliciously tingly next step.…All are engagingly unsettling in some way, with a select few crossing over into genuine nightmare territory.

Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books

★ 2014-04-16
Styling themselves "curators," four of horror fantasy's newer stars share tales and correspondence related to an imaginary museum of creepy creatures and artifacts.In addition to Bachmann, the authors include Katherine Catmull, Claire Legrand and Emma Trevayne. The letters, scattered throughout, record adventures in gathering the Cabinet's eldritch collections or report allusively on them: "I just let them creep or wing about the place," writes Curator Catmull, "and stretch their many, many, many legs. What jolly shouts I hear when the workers come across one!" The stories, most of which were previously published on the eponymous website, are taken from eight thematic drawers ranging from "Love" and "Tricks" to "Cake." Along with a cast of evil magicians, oversized spiders and other reliable frights, the stories throw children into sinister situations in graveyards, deceptively quiet gardens or forests, their own bedrooms and similar likely settings. Said children are seldom exposed to gory or explicit violence and, except for horrid ones who deserve what they get, generally emerge from their experiences better and wiser—or at least alive. Jansson's small black-and-white vignettes add scattered but appropriately enigmatic visual notes.A hefty sheaf of chillers—all short enough to share aloud and expertly cast to entice unwary middle graders a step or two into the shadows. (index, not seen) (Horror/short stories. 10-13)

Kirkus Reviews