Scare Yourself to Sleep

Children of a certain age love to scare themselves, and these two titles from the new Creepies series attempt to exploit that passion. Each first-person narrative enumerates scary things that the child imagines in the darkvarious monsters which are engagingly (and frighteningly) illustrated. The well-designed pictures are, in fact, more intriguing than the repetitive, overstated texts. In fact, these books read more like a catalogue of creepies than satisfyingly scary stories. Readers may prefer such solid collections as Alvin Schwartz's Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark or Jack Prelutsky's haunting poems in Nightmares: Poems to Trouble Your Sleep. Ages 6-8. (Sept.)