Halloween book round-up featuring authors J.P. Rose and Sarah Tagholm

October 31st 2022

About J.P. Rose J.P. Rose is the bestselling young adults novels author of over 14 adult crime titles. As a Black author with dual heritage, her passion is to smash down barriers and tell stories that help all children to see themselves reflected in the books they read. J. P. lives in the countryside with her family, surrounded by her horses. The Haunting of Tyrese Walker is her first book for children and teens. DISCOVER THE HAUNTING OF TYRESE WALKER

About Sarah Tagholm Mischievous children, nature, and all things bizarre are the inspiration behind Sarah's stories, which tend to be odd, ridiculous or, more often than not, both. Sarah lives in Cornwall with her family, two cats and a 14-year-old albino toad called Cuckoo. Wolves in Helicopters is her debut picture book. DISCOVER WEREWOLVES IN HELICOPTERS

This Halloween, there's plenty of new, terrific (and terrifying!) children's horror KS1 and KS2 fiction books to read. Tales like accidentally raising the dead in Dead Good Detectives, or dark soul-splitting rituals in The Society for Soulless Girls give us a good dose of the shivers. But where do the ideas for these scary stories come from? Two brave authors – J.P. Rose and Sarah Tagholm - plunge into the realm of children’s horror and explain some of the common inspirations behind horror stories…

From fairy tales like Little Red Riding Hood and The Three Little Pigs to modern classics like Clever Polly And The Stupid Wolf and Peter and The Wolf, wolves lurk at the frightful edges of children’s imagination.

"Wolves are such a prominent, common species in children’s literature,” explains Sarah Tagholm. “Children’s bookshelves everywhere sag under the weight of these much maligned and misunderstood creatures, so capable of striking fear into our hearts despite the fact humans in Britain persecuted them to extinction by 1760."

Yet despite the centuries past, the fear of wolves remains. Tagholm knows this all too well. Her son, plagued with night terrors, one night let slip what woke him up in a such frightened, trembling state. “He whispered just one word… wolves”. Luckily, the nightmares faded as he grew, but that one word still lingered in Sarah Tagholm’s mind.

“The seed was germinating,” she explains, “And one day, in front of a blank page, pencil in hand, the lines came to me:

Hop sits in a dark wood.

One hundred hungry eyed wolves watch her through twisted trees.”

Spirits, ghouls, poltergeists...ghosts appear in many forms across literature, and across the globe. J.P. Rose’s family taught her the ghostly Jamaican folklore of Duppies, a kind of malevolent ghost. “The stories I was told were truly frightening,” Rose says, “I was hooked, intrigued, fascinated and I knew one day, I wanted to use these tales of dark, evil spirits somehow in my writing."

What really captured Rose’s imagination was a well-known saying in Jamaica: duppy know who fi frighten (A duppy knows how to frighten). “That saying sent a creeping chill through me."

The saying creeped her out so much that it is a firm foundation of her new horror novel, The Haunting of Tyrese Walker. She set her book in Jamaica, in a culture steeped in the belief that malevolent spirits, duppies, were real. “So why not have him become the focus of a dark force. Have Tyrese be haunted by the opposite of light and hope?” 

Watch J P Rose talk about the inspiration behind her first children's book, The Haunting of Tyrese Walker, below.

For children and adults alike, a nightmare can bring terror into the real world and the everyday. To see a loved one suffer with such nightmares, as Sarah Tagholm experienced with her son, can be heartbreaking.

In response to her own experience, Tagholm wanted Wolves in Helicopters to acknowledge that nightmares really are terrifying.  “At the same time,” Tagholm says, “I wanted children to know they are not alone in their experience of nightmares, and I also wanted to say that maybe it’s possible to beat those monsters in your dreams."

The illustrations by Paddy Donelly bring hilarity and relief to the dark story, ridiculing the menaces of the protagonist's nightmares. Sarah adds that she is “hopeful they may be a help to any children suffering with night terrors”, just as her protagonist Hop finds relief, too.

Losing something or someone you love is scary, for children and for adults, and it is also hard to understand. Horror, then, offers a space in which to confront such a strong emotive force, and then understand it. J.P. Rose explains: “My adoptive mum passed away, and my world as I knew it was no more. Grief was brutal."

In the aftermath of her mum’s passing, the writing of The Haunting of Tyrese Walker became a “a transportive, cathartic experience” for the author. Reading something scary, too, can be a cathartic experience for the reader, exploring scary feelings such as grief and loss through characters like Tyrese. J.P. Rose says: “At times, grief can feel like a haunting, the ghosts and memories of the past ever-present. But eventually you come to realise that’s the light, the raft to hold onto in the darkness, the love left behind by those you have lost."

The Haunting of Tyrese Walker J.P. Rose's first children's book is "absorbing and truly creepy", according to our librarians team. They also say it has "believable characters, a well-rounded setting, and a good mystery at its centre." DISCOVER

Wolves in Helicopters Our curriculum specialists thought the illustrations in this picture book debut evoked a nightmarish atmosphere. It is a good pick for reading with adult supervision, allowing for an open discussion about what scares us, and how we might overcome it. DISCOVER

Spooked for more? Check out our Halloween children's book lists for primary age and secondary age - no tricks, all treats!

📚 READ NEXT: HALLOWEEN SPECIAL Q&A WITH AUTHOR YVETTE FIELDING