Scare Compendium: In a Dark Dark Room and Other Scary Stories by Alvin Schwartz

Everyone loves a scary story, even beginning readers, and for primary graders beginning to read independently, Alvin Schwartz' In a Dark, Dark Room and Other Scary Stories: Reillustrated Edition (I Can Read Level 2) (Harper, 2017) is a collection of several oldies but goodies which don't lose much in the translation into easy readers.

"In A Dark, Dark Room" is one variation of the traditional folk "jump tale," a story which takes the reader into a darkened room, to an dark, dark chest, to a dark, dark shelf inside that chest where a dark, dark box waits. And inside that dark, dark box there is...

A GHOST!

"The Night It Rained" is a one variant of the venerable tale of "The Haunted Hitchhiker," in which a driver gives a pale young person named Joe a ride home on a dark and stormy night, kindly offering his shivering passenger the comfort of his jacket before he drops him off at his house. When on the next day the driver remembers his coat, he is told by grieving parents that Joe has long been dead and buried in the local graveyard. And when the curious driver goes to the grave, guess what he finds neatly draped over Joe's tombstone?

Another golden oldie included is "The Green Ribbon," in which a lovely woman refuses to explain to why she always wears a green ribbon tied around her neck, until her her husband discovers why at her death.

Along with these classic tales, Schwartz offers several other short and spooky anecdotes, and closes with a historical appendix titled "Where The Stories Came From." Newly independent readers will enjoy being able to read these scary tales to themselves, or, more likely, may find it more fun to read them to kids just a bit younger than themselves... on a dark and stormy night.