| Early American religious and secular writers used horror stories to teach children appropriate, adult-approved behavior. Religious writers described dire spiritual consequences (e.g. Hell) to transgression. Secular cautionary tales warned of dire physical consequences (e.g. death, pain) to misbehavior. The messages and lessons of past horror literature were straightforward and plainspoken. The threat of death or hell as a punishment for wrong action was presented as a preventative against wrong action.;The American Temperance movement used horror narratives to proselytize sobriety. The message was, "if you drink alcohol, you will die." Contemporary writers use the same techniques to combat drug use.;The Cat in the Hat, which introduces the iconic horror figure of the unstoppable opponent into the literary world of the solitary pre-reader, occupies the central position between cautionary horror in early American children's literature and entertainment horror in contemporary American children's literature, and represents the turning point between historical didactic horror literature for children in which the message is deliberate and forceful and contemporary horror literature for children in which the message seems almost accidental.;The messages in contemporary secular horror stories for children are seldom directly presented, but the most prominent ideas are that children are alone, without parents or adult protectors, and living in a world full of random dangers, usually supernatural in origin. The series horror books are of particular interest because they contain and create the image of evil as ongoing, unstoppable, never-to-be-defeated, and place-specific, and they reiterate the randomness and relative anonymity of the victim.;The modern religious movement in horror literature for children is represented by the children's apocalyptic series, Left Behind: The Kids, by Jerry Jenkins and Tim LaHaye.;In this genre, adults are either absent by choice, completely incompetent, or are themselves the source of the danger. At the same time, horror literature for children is written and published by adults. This suggests a radical change in the nature of childhood and in adult perceptions of children's reading and their own duties towards children. This warrants an investigation into the foundations, uses, history, and currency of horror literature for children. |
