The Running Bibliophile

Mary Downing Hahn is a children's author and a former librarian. She was born on December 9, 1937 in either Washington D.C. or College Park, Maryland to Kenneth Earnest Hahn and Anna Elisabeth Sherwood.   Before attending school, she was in the care of her grandmother, who terrified her with superstitious beliefs that mainly had to do with death. Hahn's grandmother is featured in many of her middle grade novels, including Daphne's Book , The Time of the Witch , The Doll in the Garden , Time for Andrew , The Old Willis Place , and All the Lovely Bad Ones . During the summer, she would play Mother May I  and Kick the Can  along with other games. She would also go into the woods, which were supposed to be off limits to her. Anyone else wonder if these excursions are the basis of Stepping on the Cracks ? During elementary school, Hahn was the class artist and enjoyed drawing picture books and disliked writing stories. It wasn't until her junior high days that she to plea...

The Fear Street Prowler has every one on edge in Shadyside, especially Melissa, who wakes up screaming due to a tapping on her window. Strange things start happening to her like her new car veering into oncoming traffic, her presents being ripped open by an unknown entity, and something or someone trying to push Melissa out her bedroom window. Is it Melissa's imagination or the Fear Street Prowler. Find out in R.L. Stine's Haunted (Fear Street, #7) . The Fear Street book series by R.L. Stine was one of my favorite Young Adult Horror series when I was a tween and teen. I still had most of the books from them, so I decided to reread them, in the order they were published, as an adult to see if they still were as scary to me as they were back then. I didn't have a copy of Haunted , so I ordered a used copy through ThriftBooks.com. As an adult, this was a super easy read and only took a couple hours for me to finish. It was a creepy read that was perfect for a rainy night. Whe...

The Doll in the Garden, A Ghost Story by Mary Downing Hahn is a ghost story about ten year old Kristi and her mother moving into the upstairs apartment of Miss Cooper's house. Miss Cooper is an elderly woman who dislikes children and warns Kristi to stay out of the garden or there would be consequences. When a white cat that casts no shadow appears in the garden and a little girl crying could be heard coming from there, Kristi decides to investigate. I discovered Mary Downing Hahn's books at my middle school library and decided to check one of them out when I couldn't find any books I wanted to read. The Doll in the Garden was one of the first books I read by Mary Downing Hahn and contributed to my love of reading books in the horror, suspense, and thriller genres. In my quest to reread my way through my childhood, I decided it was time to find out if this story was as good as I remembered. Although I remembered the basic storyline of the book, I didn't recall all the...

Wait Till Helen Comes: A Ghost Story by Mary Downing Hahn is about the summer twelve year old Molly, ten year old Michael, and their bratty seven year old stepsister Heather, along with their parents, move into a converted church in the city of Holwell, Maryland. Believing that Holwell is much safer than Baltimore because it is out in the country, Jean and Dave feel it is safe for their kids to play outside and explore their property without constant supervision. But when Heather befriends another little girl named Helen at the cemetery on their property, bad things start to happen. I first discovered Mary Downing Hahn in the sixth grade when my English class visited the school library to be shown around and to check out a library book. Feeling frustrated that they didn't have any of my go to authors, I began perusing the shelves and came across a book called Time of the Witch by Mary Downing Hahn. Intrigued by the synopsis, I checked the book out from the library, and I ...