Don't Read This!: and Other Tales of the Unnatural

Teya Rosenberg is an assistant professor of English specializing in
children’s literature at Southwest Texas State University.

A Japanese girl pulled into a mirror; an Israeli boy traveling in his
grandfather’s dreams; a Zimbabwean man haunted by traditional beliefs;
a Canadian girl discovering her Scottish grandmother’s terrible
secret; a story pleading with its readers to stop reading before they
help create the events they read—these are among the plots featured in
this riveting collection of short stories that haunt and horrify in the
time-honored tradition of good tales of the uncanny.

Collected from around the world and published under the auspices of the
International Board of Books for Youth (IBBY), the stories present a
range of content, style, and effects that make the collection truly
enjoyable reading. The characters within the stories are a mixture of
male and female and of all ages. Each story is distinct in style and
none blurs into the others, as is often the case in horror collections.

The collection introduces readers to a wide variety of international
writers; the countries represented are New Zealand, Zimbabwe, the United
Kingdom, Italy, Germany, Japan, the Netherlands, Canada, Denmark,
Israel, and Spain. The book has one flaw: it provides no information
about the writers or the sources of the stories. Highly recommended.