Was it the vivid or accurate descriptions? Did it put into words a feeling hard to define? Maybe it convincingly conjured a unique emotion or experience?
“There’s something else about them, something that makes the hair rise up on the back of my neck, but I can’t put my finger on it.”
– The Hunger Games, Suzanne Collins
Spotlight on: FEAR
What are the things that scared you when you were a little kid? For me, it was the Daleks in Doctor Who, the theme music from The Bill, and the bit in my Sesame Street cassette where Grover fell down a flight of stairs. Nowadays, I’m scared of vomit (other people’s, and my own), and ferris wheels (particularly that bit where they stop when you’re at the very top, and just creak – gah!).
A recent survey of US teenagers found that they were most afraid of terrorist attacks, flying, heights, clowns, spiders, death, failure and the future. But everyone says that you have to face your fears, and what better way of doing it than by reading a book? You can pretty much guarantee your own personal phobia is represented in a novel somewhere.
Afraid of a possible nuclear war? Try David Almond’s The Fire Eaters. Death? You’ll love John Green’s The Fault in our Stars, Jenny Downham’s Before I Die and Gayle Foreman’s If I Stay. If you’re afraid of spiders, you can’t go past Shelob, the giant spider in JRR Tolkien’s The Two Towers.
Fear of the future is one of the hottest topics in YA literature at the moment. If you like your futures scary and dystopian, try Suzanne Collins’s The Hunger Games, Legend by Marie Lu, Shipbreaker by Paulo Bacigalupi, Matched by Ally Condie, and Isobelle Carmody’s Obernewtyn chronicles.
The great thing about books is that they let us face our fears without us actually having to really, physically face them. We can just imagine facing them which, when it comes to most of the things on that list, is just as well.
Do you enjoy tales that terrify? What’s your pick?