Ghosts: A Classic Collection

by Walt Sturrock

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 088101091X
• ISBN13: 9780881010916
• Release Date: January 1989
• Publisher: Unicorn Pub House
• Length: 157 Pages
• Weight: 8.55 lbs.
• Age Range: 4 to 8 years
• Grade Range: Preschool to Grade 3

Customer Reviews

Phantoms (and one prankster) of the night

"Ghosts" is truly a labor of love, since Walt Sturrock illustrated as well as collected each of the venerable stories between its covers.Irving's "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" is the only tale that doesn't have a ghost, a corpse, or evil revenant. I think Sturrock included it because he wanted to draw the gangly Ichabod Crane at his psalms, dancing with the blooming Katrina, and, of course, fleeing from the Headless Horseman. If you've never read "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow," but have only seen the Disney version, Washington Irving's descriptions of 'Ichabod gone a courtin' will make you laugh, not shudder:"Ichabod was a suitable figure for such a steed [a bony old plowhorse]. He rode with short stirrups, which brought his knees nearly up to the pommel of the saddle; his sharp elbows stuck out like a grasshopper's; he carried his whip perpendicularly in his hand, like a scepter, and, as his horse jogged on, the motion of his arms was not unlike the flapping of a pair of wings."All of the eight remaining stories were selected for their high fright quotient, including the dreadful "Monkey's Paw." All are accompanied by full-page illustrations in both color and black-and-white---as I mentioned earlier, "Ghosts" is a labor of love. There are thirty illustrations for the nine stories, and in his acknowledgement Sturrock thanks thirty-two of his friends and relatives by name for "posing for the characters in this edition..." Connoisseurs of phantasmagoric tales might even be able to recognize these old, oft-collected stories by the names of their illustrations, e.g. "The Judge's Rat," "The Horror of the Second Wish," and "Robbing the Grave" for "The Judge's House" by Bram Stoker, "The Monkey's Paw" by W.W. Jacobs, and "The Body-Snatchers" by Robert Louis Stevenson, respectively.If you ever want to pose for the picture of a headless woman, skeletal child, or ghastly corpse, please contact the illustrator of this book.Note: the title on the cover of "Ghosts: A Classic Collection" is the somewhat misleading "Ghost Stories," but you'll be able to recognize Sturrock's work from his picture of Wiley's swamp, the rearing black horse, and the horseman with his head stuck on his pommel.