York: Greenwillow Books. ISBN: 068880053X.
This collection is made up of poems that are like ghost stories, only in the format of a poem. The poems are direct and don�t have any abstract meaning to them. The poems include subjects such as trolls, vampires, witches, dragons and many others. The poems are meant to evoke fear, yet entertain at the same time. Some of the poems do have an element of gross humor that would certainly appeal to middle school aged readers.
The majority of the poems have a song like rhythm. The sections of the poem are grouped in lines of four and there is a lot of rhyming. Most of the poems have a rhyme scheme of abab. For example, �His eyes are pools of fire/ his skin is icy white/ and blood his one desire/ this woebegotten night� (�The Vampire�). There aren�t any instances of special spacing or interesting line breaks. Alliteration is prevalent throughout the collection � �bleak and bare,� �frenzied furies� (�The Haunted House�), �desolate depths� (�The Bogeyman�). There are also some instances of assonance that appear in a few of the poems, such as �noise, boys� and �chew, you� in �The Ghoul.� Repetition is also used in a few of the poems to create a song-like quality. In �The Dance of the Thirteen Skeletons� there is a chorus of sorts that is made up of six lines and is repeated at regular intervals in the poem.
Some figurative language and sense imagery are also used to help the reader better visualize the images in the poems. There are similes � �black as pitch� (�The Witch�) and �big as a boulder� (�The Dragon of Death�). There is also a metaphor in �The Vampire� that says �His eyes are pools of fire.� In �The Haunted House,� Prelutsky is counting on the reader�s sense of hearing when he describes the ghosts �rudely rapping, tapping, knocking.� In �The Witch,� the witch is described in great detail � �two evil eyes with warts and sties/ and bags about the rims�cracked and chipped and crackled lips/ that frame a toothless grin.� This appeals to the reader�s sense of sight.
The collection has a table of contents, but no subject or first line index. Some of the poems are lengthy and a first line index might be useful. The poems aren�t grouped in any special order. The poems are all similar to one another. While the descriptions in the poems are certainly imaginative, the subject matter itself isn�t � ghosts, witches, vampires, etc. The illustrations are black and white sketches that help the reader visualize the scenes from the poems.
The poems definitely have a universal appeal and won�t become out of date anytime soon. Ghost stories will most likely always exist in some form or another in every culture. Because of the advanced vocabulary in this collection, I wouldn�t recommend it to anyone in grades below middle school.
