Monstrous Morgues of the Past
From the Series Spooky Stories for Grades 3-8
Morgues, funeral homes, and mortuaries are all places where the dead are kept before they reach their final resting place—the grave. Here, corpses are prepared for funerals or autopsied to find out the cause of death. According to some people, morgues are also places where ghosts reside long after the bodies of the dead have been removed from the building. What is legend and what is fact? Kids will have to read Monstrous Morgues of the Past and then decide for themselves.
Among the 11 morgues in this book, readers will discover former funeral homes where the dead refuse to leave, a morgue in 19th-century Paris where over one million visitors came each year to view the dead, and a former disaster site in Chicago that is still haunted by a sobbing ghost called “The Gray Lady.” The chilling nonfiction text describing the dark histories surrounding these morgues will keep thrill-seeking readers eagerly turning the pages for more.
| Interest Level | Grade 4 - Grade 8 |
|---|---|
| Reading Level | Grade 4 |
| Category | Nonfiction |
| Subject | Social Studies |
| Copyright | 2011 |
| Publisher | Bearport Publishing |
| Imprint | Bearport Books |
| Language | English |
| Number of Pages | 32 |
| Publication Date | 2011-01-01 |
| Reading Counts! Level | 6.6 |
| Reading Counts! Quiz | Q53069 |
| Reading Counts! Points | 3.0 |
| BISACS | JNF052030 |
|---|---|
| Dewey | 133.1'22 |
| Graphics | Full-color illustrations, Full-color photographs, Historical photographs |
| Dimensions | 8 x 10 |
| Lexile | 970 |
| Guided Reading Level | S |
| ATOS Reading Level | 6.4 |
| Accelerated Reader® Quiz | 142560 |
| Accelerated Reader® Points | 1.0 |
Reviews
Monstrous Morgues
We’re in the midst of a supernatural nonfiction book rush, but few are as genuinely hair-raising as the Scary Places series. As with the publisher’s similarly creepy HorrorScapes series, the high-interest text is ideal for reluctant readers, with each two-page spread focusing on a single horrifying habitat. While not especially sophisticated, the layout is nonetheless effective, with cunning integration of stock art, photographs, period illustrations, gritty textures, and—scarier than anything else—the prevalent use of grainy snapshots showing the interiors of various abandoned buildings and cellars. Cursed Grounds digs deep for some strange ones: Utah’s Highway 191, Australia’s Babinda Creek, and even Chicago’s Wrigley Field. Monstrous Morgues of the Past turns up some stories that will have young readers agape: the Parisian morgue that became a tourist sensation, the haunted lab where 1,400 brains of the mentally ill were kept in jars, the shipwreck disaster that haunted Oprah Winfrey’s Harpo Studios. Shuttered Horror Hospitals is rife with evil sanitoriums, plus one particularly nasty tale of the 160,000 who died from leprosy on an island near Venice, Italy. Boxed factoids (or folklore) ratchet up the thrills throughout, and a map and glossary cap off the fine back matter.
Monstrous Morgues
We’re in the midst of a supernatural nonfiction book rush, but few are as genuinely hair-raising as the Scary Places series. As with the publisher’s similarly creepy HorrorScapes series, the high-interest text is ideal for reluctant readers, with each two-page spread focusing on a single horrifying habitat. While not especially sophisticated, the layout is nonetheless effective, with cunning integration of stock art, photographs, period illustrations, gritty textures, and—scarier than anything else—the prevalent use of grainy snapshots showing the interiors of various abandoned buildings and cellars. Cursed Grounds digs deep for some strange ones: Utah’s Highway 191, Australia’s Babinda Creek, and even Chicago’s Wrigley Field. Monstrous Morgues of the Past turns up some stories that will have young readers agape: the Parisian morgue that became a tourist sensation, the haunted lab where 1,400 brains of the mentally ill were kept in jars, the shipwreck disaster that haunted Oprah Winfrey’s Harpo Studios. Shuttered Horror Hospitals is rife with evil sanitoriums, plus one particularly nasty tale of the 160,000 who died from leprosy on an island near Venice, Italy. Boxed factoids (or folklore) ratchet up the thrills throughout, and a map and glossary cap off the fine back matter.
