Are You Afraid Yet?: The Science Behind Scary Stuff - Hardcover

OMeara, Stephen James

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1554532949 ISBN 13: 9781554532940

Publisher: Kids Can Press, 2009

Synopsis

Want a good scare? Try reading about severed heads that blink, killer viruses that eat their human host, and real-life werewolves (just for starters)! Scared yet? That's okay - feeling scared is natural and useful. Want to know more about these and other fears? Pick up this one-of-a-kind book, an illustrated investigation into all the stuff that's frightened us out of our wits for centuries and the gruesome, gory, gut-churning science behind it. What makes our skin crawl and our spines tingle? Why do we shiver? Why do scary movies make us scream? Uncover the truth behind such scaremongers as King Kong, UFOs, vampires, mummies, ghosts, haunted houses, and many more. First-person and historical accounts and expert scientific opinions make this the ideal book for both skeptics and believers - and anyone who loves a good old-fashioned scare. The comic-book style panels and bite-sized freaky facts mean that you can gorge on or just nibble little bits of scary stuff.

About this title

About the Author

Jeremy Kaposy lives in Toronto. He graduated with high honors from Sheridan College's renowned Illustration program. Jeremy's weird comic books led to him depicting monsters for Kids Can Press. His work has appeared on American Illustration online, and in print in the Feathertale Review.?Are You Afraid Yet? is his first kids book.

Reviews

Grade 4–7—This book cleverly weaves together the supernatural and the scientific in an entertaining read that answers questions about ghosts, UFOs, vampires, werewolves, and how long a decapitated head can remain conscious. Examples depicting such things in classical fiction and popular movies are seamlessly interjected between the factual explanations. Each page is filled with detailed black-and-white illustrations, emphasizing the sometimes-humorous, yet often-macabre descriptions. This should appeal to kids who love scary stories, while introducing them to hard science and critical thinking in the process.—Donna Atmur, Los Angeles Public Library
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Any kid who can’t help but watch scary flicks with all the lights out is going to get a chilly charge from this hand-sized horror handbook. Author O’Meara—represented in the black-and-white comic-book-style artwork as a creepy narrator with a goatee and unusually sharp teeth—uses classic tales of the macabre to introduce scientific concepts. Jekyll and Hyde are linked to psychoactive drugs, vampirism is connected to the rare blood disease porphyria, werewolves are blamed on hypertrichosis, and so forth. If this sounds too technical, don’t worry—O’Meara is most gleeful when zinging around Freaky Facts (who knew a heart has enough pressure to blast blood 30 feet into the air?). The downside is the occasional confusing setup or layout, but the upside is that everything from real-life ­monkey-Frankensteins, modern-day mummies, killer viruses, and the life cycle of maggots is attacked with gruesome gusto. O’Meara dispels some rumors while he’s at it (Bigfoot, King Tut’s curse), and even adds in his personal UFO and ghost encounters for bonus shivers. Grades 5-8. --Daniel Kraus

Edition details

• Publisher: Kids Can Press
• Publication date: 2009
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1554532949
• ISBN 13: 9781554532940
• Binding: Hardcover
• Illustrator: Kaposy Jeremy
• Number of pages: 80