Don’t Turn Out the Lights

Don't Turn Out the Lights, from the Horror Writers Association and Jonathan Maberry, is a book of short horror stories for 11 year olds, and it means every word of its title.

What happens

Each story is by a different writer, so every few pages you start again somewhere new. A royal portrait painter in a cruel kingdom. Twins and a stolen wooden bear. A girl who keeps seeing a scruffy orange cat that her mum can't see.

That's the fun of it. You never know which way the next one will go (and most of them go somewhere nasty).

Lots of the stories start with something ordinary. A mirror in the attic. A second-hand cello. A painting of a peacock feather handed down in the family. Then that ordinary thing turns out to be very wrong.

Plenty of the heroes are kids, too. Cara is the twin who always tells the truth, while her brother Elam helps himself to whatever he likes. Hailey is twelve and has grown up on warnings about the Knock-Knock Man. Theo is the friend who always has to have the best story at the bus stop.

The endings are the bit your reader will remember. Short stories can't hang about, so the twist lands fast and there's often no rescue. Who hasn't told a scary story at a sleepover and saved the worst line for last? These do exactly that, again and again.

Worth knowing before you hand it over

This is proper horror, and the gore is on the page. In the first story a new king plucks out people's eyes and pulls out their teeth and tongues. In another a little girl takes off her sleep mask and her eyes are gone, leaving bloody sockets. A boy vanishes from his bed, leaving shredded sheets and dark stains behind.

So it's not one for a reader who is easily frightened or who struggles with nightmares. Even for this shelf, it sits right at the very top.

If you've got a reader who loves being scared and wants something far stronger than the usual ghost story, though, this could be a big hit. The stories are short enough to read one a night (if they dare turn the light out afterwards).

What to read next

For another collection of very short, very creepy tales from lots of different writers, try Half-Minute Horrors. Some are only a few lines long and most finish on a nasty twist.