All Hallow’s Read is a growing tradition that turns Halloween into a scary-book-giving holiday, and we’ve got some recommendations to get you started.
Do you love Halloween? Do you also love reading? If you answered yes to both of those questions, here’s one more: have you heard the word about All Hallow’s Read?
The premise is simple enough — to add a gifting element to Halloween by giving away some spooky books in the week leaving up to All Hallow’s Eve. Acclaimed author Neil Gaiman, that benevolent master of the deeply creepy, came up with the idea in 2010 when he wistfully reflected on the fact that there aren’t enough worldwide traditions in today’s society that involve giving books, specifically, as gifts, and that it might be quite nice if there was one.
In the five years since the first All Hallow’s Read, the custom has started to become more widely spread and supported by the book-loving community. The promotion of All Hallow’s Read by authors, booksellers, librarians, publishers, book bloggers and fans is constantly growing, inspiring media attention, trending hashtags, donation drives and live events. Gaiman’s modest, musing little blog post has inspired the book industry to lock in All Hallow’s Read as an important date on any reader’s calendar.
Hear more from Neil Gaiman about All Hallow’s Read in the video below:
Holidays like Christmas and Valentine’s Day constantly suffer from raging commercialization, so the addition of expensive gift-giving to yet another holiday could raise eyebrows in that regard, but it’s really not a bid to boost sales. All Hallow’s Read advocates the gifting of second-hand books, library recommendations, or even loaning your personal copies. Nor is it an attempt to “healthify” the childhood candy-collecting excitement. Gaiman does not recommend replacing your neighborhood’s normal trick-or-treating candy with books — he doesn’t want to be held responsible for your house getting egged! The All Hallow’s Read book-gifting tradition is designed to enhance, not eclipse, the traditional Halloween experience — it’s simply a chance to share a specific type of book with someone you love, or someone you want to get to know, over the course of the spooky season.
If you want to get involved in this year’s All Hallow’s Read, here are some of our top recommendations for kids and adults. This collection of titles ranges from a brand-new release to an obscure 19th century literary classic, and it passes through tongue-in-cheek satire, dreamy mythology, psychological thrillers and beloved fairy tales. What these books all have in common is an element of the magical or the macabre, making them perfect Halloween gifts to bond over.
‘Fairy Tales from the Brothers Grimm’ – Philip Pullman
In 1812, German brothers Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm published their first volume of fairy tales, including the stories we know as Cinderella, Rapunzel, Snow White, and Sleeping Beauty. Even at the time, the tales — many with nasty, violent endings — were criticized as being too, well, grim, for children, but over the years, sanitized and less scary versions have become a pillar of Western storytelling, most notably through Disney. For the Grimms’ 200th anniversary, esteemed author Philip Pullman released a compilation of his fifty favorite stories, retold in his own unique way. Pullman’s never shied away from dark or controversial subject matter, and his version may be the only one around that does justice to the originals.
‘A Series of Unfortunate Events’ – Lemony Snicket
From The Bad Beginning onwards, A Series of Unfortunate Events follow the tragic adventures of the Baudelaire orphans – Violet, Klaus and Sunny – as their scheming relative Count Olaf follows them from home to home, killing off their carers and attempting to steal their inheritance. Snicket, as narrator, is a character in and of himself, and the series’ humorous, slightly satirical tone with gothic and steampunk elements is charming, but it does not sugar coat the horrors that the children face. Overall, Snicket credits the intelligence of young readers, and with a Netflix version in the works, now’s a great time to revisit the source material.
‘Red Dragon’ – Thomas Harris
Gore galore. Red Dragon is the first of Thomas Harris’s Hannibal Lecter novels, and the only one to feature the empathetic FBI profiler Will Graham, played so enchantingly by Hugh Dancy in Bryan Fuller’s unjustly cancelled NBC series. The show serves mostly as a prequel to the book series — the Red Dragon novel covers the second half of the final season, tracking the Tooth Fairy killer three years after Hannibal is finally caught by Will and imprisoned. The later Hannibal novels feature the serial killer’s relationship with Clarice Starling, but the TV series is a love letter to Harris’s writing and Fuller mined all of the novels for his episodes, re-purposing events and dialogue from the entire book series.
‘Goosebumps’ – R.L. Stine
If you were a Nineties child, the quivery Goosebumps logo will forever be iconic. It was truly a pop culture phenomenon, with 62 books released in R.L. Stine’s original series, as well as over 100 spin-off books since then. A Night In Terror Tower was a personal favorite, but titles like The Scarecrow Walks at Midnight and Night of the Living Dummy will always send a shiver up the spines of a generation – a shiver that should be passed on to children today. A new, fourth-wall-breaking Goosebumps movie was released earlier this month starring Jack Black as R.L. Stine, so a classic Goosebumps title would be a perfect All Hallow’s Read gift.
‘Rebecca’ – Daphne Du Maurier
This best-selling gothic masterpiece is a genre-defining work of modern horror, and it has never gone out of print since its first publication in 1938. The book’s unnamed narrator, a young woman, recounts the story of her marriage to a rich older widower and how the mystery of his first wife, Rebecca, haunted their home. Rebecca gave the world one of literature’s nastiest antagonists in the form of Mrs Danvers, the late Rebecca’s devoted and overbearing housekeeper who attempted to sabotage the narrator, as well as one of its most memorable first lines: “Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again…”
‘Welcome to Night Vale’ – Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Cranor
In just a few short years, the queer-friendly absurdist horror podcast that is Welcome to Night Vale has become somewhat of a cult classic. The podcast, in the format of the town’s local radio show, is hosted by lead character Cecil Palmer, as he relays the perpetually bizarre and paranormal events that occur in the fictional desert town of Night Vale — events that the locals accept without question on a regular basis. Recently, podcast creators Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Cranor have released a novel set in their Night Vale universe, telling a brand-new story from the perspectives of two long-term Night Vale residents. And now, the weather.
‘Rivers of London’ – Ben Aaronovitch
In his Peter Grant series, Ben Aaronovitch has created a fantastic and funny urban fantasy that feels so real that you could touch it. Rivers of London is the first of five novels – with more on the way — and introduces Peter Grant, a young cop with uninspiring prospects, to the world of the supernatural and the small branch of the London Metropolitan police that deals with magic in an officially sanctioned way. He encounters wizards, human personifications of rivers, and a villain from the ever-creepy and intrinsically British Punch and Judy legend in a perfect present-day portrait of London that benefits from the added bonus of hidden magic.
‘The Scorpio Races’ – Maggie Stiefvater
Halloween is actually the perfect time to immerse yourself in The Scorpio Races, as the book’s bloody and eponymous event traditionally takes place on the first of November each year. Deeply cemented in Irish mythology, it follows the story of four-time champion Sean and the event’s first female competitor, Puck, as they take part in racing the deadly Celtic water horses that take over their island home. The Scorpio Races is Stiefvater’s only stand-alone novel — she’s well known for the Shiver and Raven Cycle series — and it’ll also be her first on-screen adaptation, with a director for the Focus Features project recently announced.
‘The King In Yellow’ – Robert W. Chambers
The King in Yellow is an unfathomably disturbing collection of short stories, originally published in 1895, which are linked by the existence and effect of a fictional play called ‘The King in Yellow’ which induces madness in people who read it, in settings ranging from a grim 1920s New York (the distant future, for Chambers) to the bohemian artist’s Paris. In the past, this book has been considered relatively obscure to mainstream audiences, but it’s inspired many future generations of horror authors. Fans of True Detective may also recognize the tale, as phrases and themes from The King in Yellow were used in the first season’s mystery.
‘The Graveyard Book’ – Neil Gaiman
Did you think we would really compile a list of recommendations for All Hallow’s Read without including a Gaiman title? Coraline is the more famous of Neil’s novels for children, in part due to the Oscar-nominated Henry Selick stop-motion film adaptation, but The Graveyard Book, about a young boy raised by the inhabitants – that is, to say, ghosts – of his local graveyard after his family are murdered, is a really heartfelt book. It’s imbued throughout with a low, throbbing hum of fear in contrast to Coraline’s strains of high-pitched creepiness, but it holds its fair share of action, and also the trifecta of the Carnegie, Newbery and Hugo awards.