Prelutsky's Nightmares: Poems to Trouble Your Sleep back in print!

A few weeks ago my Sept 2008 post on Jack Prelutsky's scary poetry book Nightmares: Poems to Trouble Your Sleep got picked up by weird-news aggregator Fark.com (temporarily giving my StatCounter account a heart attack...), which got me to wondering what prices the long out of print gem was going for these days...

WELL it looks like the book is back in print in a library-binding (read: durable hardcover) edition for around $16. I haven't seen the reprint so can't tell you if the contents have changed at all or if there are any omissions, but if you've been hoping to pick up a copy, shoot on over to Amazon or Barnes & Noble and order one now!

The Goblin (Jack Prelutsky, 1977)

I previously posted about The Ghoul, the memorable entry from Jack Prelutsky's Nightmares: Poems to Trouble Your Sleep (1976). The ghoul perched patiently outside a window, waiting for the children within to come out. That poem refused to be forgotten, partly because of the explicit descriptions of the ghoul's gruesome intentions (reproduced in their entirety in the previous post, linked above).

Prelutsky revisited this theme for younger readers a year later in his 1977 love-letter to October thirty-first, "It's Halloween" (illustrations by Marylin Hafner).

Only this time it's The Goblin holding patient vigil outside a window, and any violence it may wish to visit upon the child inside is left to our imagination. This monster only wants to play... or so it says.

Nightmares: Poems to Trouble Your Sleep (1976)

"Nightmares: Poems to Trouble Your Sleep" (1976, Jack Prelutsky, illustrated by Arnold Lobel) is a book of 12 poems on witches, werewolves, vampires, haunted houses, and all things scary. Each poem is illustrated with one or more full-page black and white drawings in a style reminiscent of Edward Gorey. Pelutsky has written several books of poetry for children, but this particular one is out of print as of this writing.

UPDATE 4/13/10 Appears to have come back in print recently in a library-binding edition! Buy it new right now at Amazon or Barnes & Noble!

One of the poems, "The Ghoul", stands out among the others in its sheer gruesome explicitness. It actually kind of shocked me when I first read it as a child, to the extent that it stuck with me long after I'd returned the borrowed book to the public library.

Here is a sampling of the illustrations and interior pages, with the complete text of "The Ghoul" at the end:

THE HAUNTED HOUSE

"Shadows from the dim hereafter
hang from every creaking rafter,
laughing disembodied laughter
in their ghostly glee."
-excerpt from The Haunted House

THE WILL 'O THE WISP


THE VAMPIRE





THE WITCH


THE DANCE OF THE THIRTEEN SKELETONS


THE GHOUL
THE GHOUL

The gruesome ghoul, the grisly ghoul,
without the slightest noise
waits patiently beside the school
to feast on girls and boys.

He lunges fiercely through the air
as they come out to play,
then grabs a couple by the hair
and drags them far away.

He cracks their bones and snaps their backs
and squeezes out their lungs,
he chews their thumbs like candy snacks
and pulls apart their tongues.

He slices their stomachs and bites their hearts
and tears their flesh to shreds,
he swallows their toes like toasted tarts
and gobbles down their heads.

Fingers, elbows, hands and knees
and arms and legs and feet -
he eats them with delight and ease,
for every part's a treat.

And when the gruesome, grisly ghoul
has nothing left to chew,
he hurries to another school
and waits...perhaps for you.