Ask The Bones by Arielle North Olson and Howard Schwartz

ISBN: 014230140X
160 pages
published in 1999.

This was a pretty cute story book. Ask The Bones is a collection of 22 scary stories from around the world. All of them are told simply enough to appeal to young readers, but the stories have enough variety to entertain even someone my age (and probably older!) The most interesting thing about these stories is how unique many of them are. This isn’t a collection of over-told cliche scary stories. Some of them are gruesome. Some of them are even a little bit silly. There are a few that fall a little flat, but for the most part the stories in this collection are a refreshing reminder of the variety of stories that are circulating the world.

My favorite story in the collection has to be The Bloody Fangs – a tale about a young Japanese boy that spends most of his time drawing cats. He doesn’t seem to have his heart in any other activity he tries. Art appears to be his calling. After being told to pursue this by a priest that he was previously studying under, he comes across an abandoned temple. Wanting to help, he stays and waits for people to return, however, there are many white screens in the building and he can’t help but draw cats on all of them. Heading the priest’s earlier warning, he settles inside a small cabinet to sleep and wait. However, he hears a horrible noise coming into the temple. Sure enough, it’s a huge rat that had been terrorizing the temple, thus causing the fleeing of all its inhabitants. However, while locked inside his cabinet, he hears yowling and growling and hissing and awakes the next morning to find blood smeared on all the mouths of the cats he had drawn. Cool stuff.

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