Spooky Reads for Spooky Season

Posted: October 01, 2024

Is your library in need of some more fang-tastic reads? It's time to break out the cobwebs, fangs and capes. Halloween is almost upon us and we’re all about the treats this year, no tricks in sight! We have a bunch of fa-BOO-lous book recommendations and free downloads available to help bring the Halloween vibes to your classroom or library this spooktober.

Top Ten Scary Books for KS2

Nothing keeps the pages turning quite like the chills and heebie-jeebies of books that are just scary enough; and there is always a high demand for this genre, which allows children to explore fear from the safety of a book. These are our top ten picks to electrify, delight, and thrill readers in key stage 2.

The Beast & the Bethany by Jack Meggitt-Phillips
Dark & Dangerous Gifts of Delores Mackenzie by Yvonne Banham
The Doll Twin by Janine Beacham
Gargoyles: Guardians of the Source by Tamsin Mori
The Night of The Nobody by Guy Bass
No Place For Monsters by Kory Merritt
The Spirit Snatcher by Cat Gray
A Tap At The Window by Gabriel Dylan
The Witchstone Ghosts by Emily Randall-Jones
Zombie Stories to Scare Your Socks Off! by Benjamin Harper

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Grab our free bookmarks and share the spook! Print and distribute them to your KS2 students to help them discover their next terrifying tale.

Free Downloadable Halloween Themed Reading Challenges

Our Spooktober Reading Challenges are designed to ignite your students' imaginations and encourage a love of reading. With three exciting options, there's something for every young bookworm. Choose from three spooky challenges:

Spooky Bingo: Can your students hit BINGO before Halloween?
Mini Bingo: Perfect for a half-term challenge or shorter reading period.
5-Book Challenge: Can they read 5 spooky books during October?

Decorate Your Classroom with Spooky Fun Posters!

Our free downloadable posters are the perfect way to add a spooky touch to your classroom and inspire a love of reading. Featuring fun illustrations and engaging messages about reading, these posters will add some spooky fun to your classroom or library. Choose from

Hi-Lo Horror for UKS2

Eerie tales of ghosts, monsters, and mystery will lure your readers with the promise of a good scare!

The 25 titles in this collection are perfect for children aged 9–11 with reading ages 5–8.5. They utilise a range of dyslexia-friendly features to support pupils’ reading such as easy-to-read fonts and line spacing, bite-sized chunks of text and illustrations that help build comprehension of these gripping short stories.

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Quick, Horrifying Reads for Secondary School Libraries

We know how hard it can be to get teens off their phones and into a book, but if there is one genre they all seem to love, it's horror! These short stories are great for struggling readers and they also make gripping quick reads for a lunchtime reading group to share aloud.

These horror collections contain illustrated stories and longer novellas, providing something appropriate for teenage readers at many stages in their reading journey. Zombies, ghosts, vampires and other nightmarish characters inhabit the pages, with stories that are short, accessible and terrifying in equal measure. These gruesome tales are impossible to look away from but be warned, they are liable to give you nightmares!

These collections are available in two convenient Accelerated Reader™ levelled sets, offering stories suitable for secondary students at various reading stages:

Filled with evil clowns, mad magicians and a mysterious (and possibly sinister) Ringmaster — who will escape and who will be doomed?

Written with carefully controlled language but gruesome and exciting plots, this six-book series is aimed at teenagers aged 12+ with a reading age of 6–7. The stories include elements of horror, the supernatural, action and adventure, and reluctant readers are sure to be drawn into the drama that unfolds inside each title.

Browse Big Top of Horrors • Download Free Posters

Welcome to Horror Hotel… Do you dare to stay the night?

When teenagers find a mysterious hotel in the woods, they have no idea what terrors they may face. Filled with monsters, intelligent technology and an eccentric hotel manager who may or may not be there to help, who will manage to escape from Horror Hotel and who will be permanently checked in?

Browse Horror Hotel • Download Free Posters

Papercuts is an eerie and haunting series written to appeal to students aged 13+ who are intimidated by full-length novels. All titles have a reading age of 8–9 and an accessible word count of 5000–6000. Written by respected and accomplished authors, they are packed with horror and elements of the supernatural. But be warned, they’re not for the faint-hearted!

Browse Papercuts • Download Free Posters

With our top-notch selections of horror books, reading challenges, and classroom decor, your library is sure to be the spookiest in town this Halloween!