Halloween poems

Stephen Gammell is one of the most recognized masters of visual horror. His most famous work in this genre remains the series of Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark by Alvin Schwartz. These collections were published over the course of a decade, until Schwartz’s death in 1992. Decades later, a feature film adaptation was released, with the visual atmosphere deeply inspired by Gammell’s haunting illustrations.

Online, you can find countless stories of children who used to pore over these books for hours — secretly, under the covers, with a flashlight — shivering from that peculiar blend of fear and fascination. But Scary Stories are not the only eerie books shaped by Gammell’s imagination. Vampires, werewolves, and ghosts have inhabited his visual world since the early 1970s, and seem to have never left it.

The collection Halloween Poems by Myra Cohn Livingston, illustrated by Gammell, came out in 1989 — the golden age of spooky and gothic children’s literature. It’s a set of eighteen short Halloween verses, playful and unsettling at once, where the artist’s distinctive line and color conjure a mysterious, slightly surreal mood.

It’s worth noting that although many readers associate Gammell’s name primarily with “scary stories,” they make up only a small part of his creative work. In that very same 1989, another book he illustrated — Song and Dance Man by Karen Ackerman — received the Caldecott Medal, the highest honor for American picture books.