A few Halloweens ago, I was at one of my favorite flea markets–Queen of Hearts in Buford, and in my favorite booth, called “Down the Rabbit Hole”, I found this book. This dealer always finds great vintage books and toys and even if this isn’t that old, it has a lovely vintage feel with the quality of the illustrations.
The book is loaded with sweet black kitties!
I have a frightening amount of books. Most deal with animals, art, monsters and creatures, folklore, and ghost stories. Which, coincidentally, is a lot of what you’ll see on this site. 🙂
This book terrifies me to this day. I used to check it out of our library when I was a kid in the late 70s and early 80s (nobody really monitored what kind of books I was getting each trip) and I firmly believe it still holds up.
The Uwharries (pronounced “uw-har-ees”),named by the Native Americans that originally lived there,are a mountain range that once towered 20,000 feet but now only rise a little over 1,000 feet and cover an area of about 50 miles through North Carolina, sort of in the Charlotte area. The African Americans, Germans and Scotch-Irish folk who populated these mountains left a rich oral tradition that author Fred T. Morgan has taken a fine sample from for this book.
Ghost Tales of the Uwharries features twenty tales; some unsettling, some terrifying, and a few are just plain funny. One, called “The Phantom Family of Five”, is a touching story of a man’s love for his long-dead family and truly jerks at the heartstrings. A particularly violent one is “The Hatchet-Swinging Fire”.
The book is made even more frightening by its illustrations; a series of blunt, choppy woodcuts that get to the heart of the subject matter and do not go into fine detail. They have hovered in my mind for years, sometimes just popping up at the edge of my consciousness when I’m half-awake.
If you’re a stickler for scary tales handed down for generations, this book is a great choice, especially for Halloween. Read them out loud to friends and family on a chilly fall night, and if you’re good at southern dialects you’ll make them sound even more authentic.
Oh, for heaven’s sake, could there be an easier answer for me?
I have several art challenges going at once…when I feel like doing one, I pick up that sketchbook, and I may not go back to it for a few days. I go at my own pace.
(Here is a quick lesson on theropods.)
The general public not being total dinosaur nerds like me,I suppose most of the general public learned what a carnotaurus was once the Disney movie Dinosaur came out. I am happy to say I was made aware of it much earlier, back in the early 90’s, when I was in college. I found a bookstore downtown at my school that had some discounted book out front and found this great kid’s book called A Gallery of Dinosaurs and Other Early Reptiles, by David Peters. It is still one of my favorite dino books because every dinosaur or other reptile in it is pictured in a group of its peers, to scale. And with kids included so you can see, if you’re a kid, how you compare with the giants..or the shrimps! Anyway, this was my first look at Carnotaurus.
Holy smokes, what a horror of a face.
I instantly loved it.
Wow, this is a doozy! As my two brothers and I plowed through boxes of our old stuff at our mother’s house, a big pile of comic books came to light. They were all spooky,scary, mystical titles that I remember sneaking into my brothers’ closet and trying to read. I didn’t understand much but I loved it. My brothers gave me the books, and at last I can read them at leisure. I’ll post the pics, and feel free to review any you might might have read. Here goes!
