Lately I’ve been obsessed with the author Mary Downing Hahn. I’ve said it before, but it’s worth mentioning again—when I find an author I love, I will read everything she (or he) writes. It’s part of my reader’s manifesto. This is the case with Mary Downing Hahn.
I first read Hahn when I was a pre-teen and the book Wait Til Helen Comes was featured in a Halloween display in my middle school library. I enjoyed scary books as a kid, and this book was everything I loved about reading and horror and horrific imagination. I haven’t re-read this book yet, but it’s on my list.
Hahn has a whole stack of other scary books she’s written over the years. I sort of lost sight of her once I became an adult, but recently one of my boys asked me to start reading one of her books to him. This led me to checking out every single book of hers from our local library.
The most recent ones that I’ve read include The Old Willis Place, Dead Man in Indian Creek, The Ghost of Crutchfield Hall and Took.
Three of these are actually in the kid-lit horror section, so I’ll talk about them first. The Old Willis Place is a story about two children, Diana and Georgie, who live in the woods around the Old Willis Place. A new caretaker comes around and they start to play tricks on him, like they do to every caretaker. But this time the caretaker has a daughter, and Diana really wants to be her friend, but she can’t break the sinister rules that keep her and Georgie tied to the woods.
The Ghost of Crutchfield Hall is about a 12-year-old orphan, Florence, who goes to live with her uncle in a creepy old house where her cousin, who was exactly her age, died. Her cousin haunts the house and is not a nice ghost.
Took was about a creepy old ghost that haunted the woods around the home that Daniel and Erica’s parents buy. When Erica disappears, Daniel has to brave those woods to save his sister. This was probably the scariest one of them all.
The Dead Man in Indian Creek was about a boy, Matt, and his best friend, Parker, who discover a dead body while out camping in the woods. They try to solve who did it. This one was creepy in a different way and had quite a bit of mature content because it dealt with drugs and violence, but it was still just as enjoyable as the others.
What I love about Hahn is that she seems to have such an authentic connection with the middle grade voice. Hahn understands children. Even in the middle of scary situations, her characters come to life as innocent children, mostly. They have authority, of course, but it’s an authority that’s constantly trying to work out who they are and what they should do. Her narrators don’t know everything. So that immediately creates a tension with the reader—will the narrator figure out what’s going on? Will she make the right choice in letting a hostile ghost go free? Will he be brave enough to face a dangerous monster in the woods?
Hahn has written quite a few stories in the same genre, but they don’t feel the same. The characters are very much different from one another. Matt, in The Dead Man in Indian Creek, was a little humorous and self-deprecating, as we can see in this passage, where he’s making fun of himself for being a bit overweight:
“Forgetting my resolve, I looked at him. ‘What’s the matter with you,’ I said. Angrily, I broke the stick I’d been whittling and tossed it into the bushes. If we were going to have a fight, okay, I was ready. Let him sock me, I’d sock him back, and then I’d sit on him, my ultimate advantage, right?”
One of the other characteristics of Hahn’s books that make them come alive for me are the creepy descriptions of houses and woods and rooms. I’ve talked before about how some of the scariest things I read or watch are the things that use understatement and let the imagination fill in all the details. Hahn is a master of letting her readers do this for themselves. Here’s her description of the Old Wills Place:
“The old Willis place everyone calls it, though its true name was Oak Hill Manor. The front lawn was a field of knee-high weeds and thistles the size of small trees. Paint peeled from the front door and wood trim. The steps and porch had rotted long ago. Shutters hung crooked from the boarded windows; some had fallen off and leaned against the house. Slates from the roof littered the yard. Two tall double chimneys tilted to the right, giving the place an unstable look, as if it might topple over at any moment in a tumble of bricks.”
You can just imagine that haunted house and all the horrors within it, can’t you?
I will be spending the rest of this year going through Hahn’s backlist, which is quite extensive. Most of her stories are scary ones, but some are historical or mysterious. I’m sure I’ll love every one.
Be sure to visit my recommendation page if you’re interested in seeing some of my best book recommendations. If you have any books you recently read that you think I’d enjoy, don’t hesitate to get in touch. And, if you’re looking for some new books to read, stop by my starter library, where you can get a handful of my books for free.
*The books mentioned above have affiliate links attached to them, which means I’ll get a small kick-back if you click on them and purchase. But I only recommend books I enjoy reading myself. Actually, I don’t even talk about books I didn’t enjoy. I’d rather forget I ever wasted time reading them.
