This week, we asked our NYPL book experts to name some books that aren’t technically scary—not horror or dystopia or anything else intended to freak you out—but that have some kind of eerie, haunting element they just can’t get out of their heads.
Their answers surprised us! There was consensus this week on a few books, including two much-loved children’s books that, it turns out, many people find deeply creepy.
Picture Books
For all out, unintentional creepiness, my vote goes to The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein. I get goosebumps every time I think of it. Give until you die? I don’t think so! This book is really gruesome. Supposedly a tale of unselfishness, I think it is a tale of unbelievable, self-centered greed. —Maura Muller, Volunteer Office
Much has been written about the back cover of The Giving Tree. Scariest. Portrait. Ever. —Billy Parrott, Mid-Manhattan
That kid is the worst, and then he murders the tree. I always really bothered by that book too. Glad I’m not the only one. —Anne Rouyer, Mulberry Street
I know I may offend someone with my creepiest not-supposed-to-be-creepy book, but I even shudder as I post Robert Munsch's Love You Forever. A book celebrating parent-child love, but mom climbing through the bedroom window to rock and sing “I love you forever” to her grown up son”? SO creepy. Can always envision the horror film this could become. —Danita Nichols, Inwood
I would definitely go with Love You Forever. I received this book when my daughter was still young and was excited to read it to her. The beginning is lovely and then the story gets totally creepy towards the end. As much as I love my daughter, I would not climb through her window to cuddle her while she was an adult and I would hope she would not do the same to me when she got older. I understand the overall point of the story; however, some of those images are forever imprinted on my brain. —Sandra Farag, Mid-Manhattan
Fully agree with that one. The first half of the book made me smile with recognition, and as the son aged, I grew increasingly disturbed… give the kid some autonomy! —Kasia Kowalska, Business Development
As a child, I always found Tomie dePaola’s The Legend of Old Befana a terrifying read. The story is about a cranky old woman who is fond only of cleaning and baking. After meeting a group traveling to find the newborn baby Jesus, she dismisses their invitation to join them finding the baby. However, after cleaning up her house and baking a gift for him, she decides to accept their invite and travels out to find them. BUT SHE NEVER DOES! She never finds them, no matter how far she travels or for how long. I know that it’s a beloved traditional story, but it was a horrifying concept for me as a child, and it’s still kind of terrible when I think about it as an adult. —Katrina Ortega, Hamilton Grange
The whimsical Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, which was otherwise my absolute favorite book as a child, has a picture where a (normal-sized) pancake has landed on a boy’s face. Something about the boy’s shocked, open-mouthed expression and the illustrator’s line made this small part of the book terrifying. I think it was my first experience with the uncanny valley, and it was always unsettling for me. —Leah Labrecque, 58th Street
I found Maurice Sendak’s stories to be disturbing, especially In the Night Kitchenand Outside Over There. Dream-like, but not happy dreams. Any of the old folk stories or Grimm’s or H.C. Andersen’s tales, like Hansel & Gretel, have creepy elements in them. Witch plotting to fatten and roast children. The image of the two bad sisters in Cinderella hacking off their feet so they could stuff them in the glass slipper. Creepy stuff. —Anne Barreca, Battery Park City
Creepiness for Kids & Young Adults
I have always loved A Wrinkle in Time yet have always been creeped out by the disembodied brain called “It.” I actually was more disturbed by the fact of It being a disembodied brain than by the things It did (e.g. controlling people like automatons). —Melisa Tien, Library for the Performing Arts
The thing in A Wrinkle in Time that disturbed me most was the bit about getting sent to a reality in which they couldn’t move at all (it was a brief stopover on the way somewhere else) and Meg getting frozen. I’m not entirely claustrophobic, but that kind of absolute immobility gave me the heebie-jeebies. —Arieh Ress, Mid-Manhattan
I’m currently reading When by Victoria Laurie and while the book is more mystery and crime-based, the main character’s ability to see people’s pending date of death just floating above their heads (even in pictures!) is giving me the heebie-jeebies! What a horrible thing to know! —Jessica DiVisconte, Administration
Graphic Novels
In Ozma of Oz, Dorothy and her chicken and Tik-Tok end up in the home of a princess who has a collection beautiful heads she swaps out when she feels like it. Even as a kid reading it I understood the character’s cabinets full of heads she could change into was a comment on vanity and closets full of clothes, but it’s still pretty creepy. —Christopher Platt, Library Services
In David Small’s graphic memoir Stitches, young David awakes from what he thought was a routine surgery to find that he cannot speak because his vocal cords were removed. Freaking terrifying. —Caitlin Colman-McGaw, Programming
Raina Telgemeir’s graphic novel Smile, in which she describes in detail all the nightmarish parts of dental work she had to endure as a result of a roller skating accident, only exacerbated my fear of dentists. I read the book with my hand over my mouth the entire time! —Ronni Krasnow, Morningside Heights
Creepiness for Grown-Ups
I’m reading Chocky by John Wyndham for the first time. This book (despite the subject matter, an imaginary friend who at times “possesses” the boy in the story) is not very scary. But some of the boy’s drawings that weren’t painted directly by him are described as people whose “figures have a curious, attenuated, not to say scrawny look” that I imagine as something along the lines of an Alberto Giacommetti sculpture or drawing. —Jenny Baum, Jefferson Market
Theodore Roscoe’s epic history of the American submarine fleet in World War II, Pig Boats, had me tossing with nightmares about being crushed by an iron fist in deep water. These usually happened after I finished a chapter detailing how destroyers dropped depth charges on American crews who could only ride the explosions out in hopes their hulls would survive. —Joshua Soule, Spuyten Duyvil
One of the eeriest details in Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves is when Will Navidson measures the outside of his house and comes up with the figure 32’ 9¾”. That matches the architectural plans, which is fine, except for the fact that when he measures the inside of the house, the total comes to 32’ 10”. The inside of the house is a quarter of an inch longer than the outside. He measures again and again—even drilling into walls to get more accurate readings, but still comes up with the same discrepancy. Deliciously creepy. —Wayne Roylance, Selection Team
[Spoiler alert!]The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender had an unexpectedly creepy moment for me. In this novel with elements of magical realism, the main character discovers that she can taste people’s emotions in food. The rest of her family have similar “gifts,” and the part that really gave me the heebie-jeebies is when her brother, who’s been disappearing for longer and longer stretches of time, is revealed to be a chair. Eee! —Susan Tucker Heimbach, Mulberry Street
The first 18 lines or so of The Soul of the Night, by Chet Raymo. He very memorably and effectively describes how much is actually happening in the brief moment during a random accident. A small child was lifted in the air for an instant, but between the Earth’s spinning and its orbit around the sun and the rotation of the Milky Way the child flew hundreds of miles through the galaxy. A fine membrane separates the seemingly peaceful and the infinitely vast and chaotic, and in the universal scope of things, the fineness of that separation troubles me to no end. —Billy Parrott, Mid-Manhattan
Staff picks are chosen by NYPL staff members and are not intended to be comprehensive lists. We'd love to hear your ideas too, so leave a comment and tell us what you’d recommend.
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