A Creepy Company
Joan Aiken
Published by Puffin
0-14-036789-6, £4.50 pbk
11 short, eerie stories, effective because they take the stuff of everyday life and slide it just out of focus. The most profound terrors surface when familiar landscapes acquire an unexpected dimension: the family house made ghostly by an unfamiliar creaking stair... These stories should be read aloud: linguistic sophistication suggests that Year 9 pupils would be an appropriate audience. The book would be most useful as a class text: 'Toomie' calls out for cross-curricular links with History; 'My Disability' opens the way to myths and legends; 'The Traitor' provides intriguing insights into a moral climate very different from our own.
Reviewed in BfK No. 93 (July 1995) by Val Randall (VR)
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