Witching Hour

Had an amazing weekend with family and friends and am now ready to face the week head on! I am almost finished with my October/Halloween list and am starting to move on to my cold weather/preholiday list, but first lets finish out the week with some good old fashioned scares shall we.

Today I would like to talk about the short story collection Under my Hat: Tales from the Cauldron.  This was a random find as I was walking through the bookstore and seemed like the perfect October short story collection for my desk side reading.  After realizing that it was edited by Jonathan Strahan (who edited one of my absolute favorite collections The Starry Rift) I was sold.  This is a collection for children and teens, spooky without being overly dark (for the most part).  It is not ooey gooey by any means, and a couple of the tales are in the creep side, but nothing that I would consider over the top.  Over all it was a great collection and with all short story anthologies there were some that really stuck with me.

A Handful of Ashes by Garth Nix-I think this is my favorite story in this collection.  It is a complete story set in a complete world and I really want to read more stories about this place and these characters which is pretty hard to do in 20 or less pages.  This story about servant/witches in a Jane Austin type society school is a pretty great story with just the right amount of humor.

The Education of a Witch by Ellen Klages- I have to admit the biggest appeal of this story is the little girls obsession with Maleficent from Disney's Sleeping Beauty, she has always been my absolute favorite witch ever!  Also the fact that this story is about a little girl who is not so much into the fairy tale princesses, and finds a way to gain some control over her small world is pretty cool as well.

The Threefold World by Ellen Kushner and Anderson's Witch by Jane Yolen-Both of these stories touch on real people, Elias Lonnrot who put together a collection of Finnish history and lore called the Kalevala and Hans Christian Anderson who collected/wrote fairy tales.  Both of these stories deal with how these men may have potentially been influenced by witch type figures, resulting in these historical works of literacy.

Which Witch by Patricia A. McKillip-I loved this punky, rockstar story of a literal band of young witches and there familiars.  This is a case where the music and clothes are just as important as the spells and potions.  The part where we get to switch over to the animal/familiar perspective is pretty cool too! I love a story that can mix up settings and give us a glimpse at the next generation of the supernatural.

The Carved Forest by Tim Pratt-This story about a witch who cares too much was wonderful and just a bit different.  We are so used to witches being evil, or sparkly that we sometimes forget that it is possible that they are just people with a particular talent.   This story shows us what happens when a witch who loses her family decides to adopt a town to replace them.

These are my absolute favorites in this collection, but there are many other wonderful stories in there as well.  I would recommend it for some quick Halloween/October reading if you like witchy/magicy/different stories.  I give it 7 out of 10 cauldrons of potion.

What is your favorite scary story collection?  Do witches always have to be evil?  What counts as a witch?  Do I enjoy Halloween way to much?