Frightening Fiction

This is an analysis of the dominance of the horror story in children's publishing since the 1980s, with particular emphasis on R.L. Stine and the Point Horror phenomenon and its many competitors. Edited by Morag Styles and written by an international team of acknowledged experts, this series provides jargon-fee, critical discussion and a comprehensive guide to literary and popular texts for children. Each book introduces the reader to a major genre if children's literature, covering the key authors, major works and contexts in which those texts are published, read and studied. The development of the horror genre in children's literature has been a startling phenomenon - one that has provoked strong, but mixed, reactions. Frightening Fiction provides a lucid and lively guide to that genre, ranging from analyses of such popular series as Point Horror, Goosebumps, the X Files and the buffy stories, to the work of individual authors such as Robert Westall, David Almond, Philip Gross and Lesley Howarth. Kimberly Reynolds is Professor of Children's Literature at the University of Surrey Roehampton and Director of the National Centre for Research in Children's Literature where Kevin McCarron is Senior Lecturer in American Literature. Geraldine Brennan is Books Editor for the Times Educational Supplement.