Very scary. Very Irish, too, contemporary not mythology or old-timey at all. I'd love to share it with a classroom of 6-7 year olds as Halloween approaches. I *love* how the boy dealt with his fright. ( )

"The Banshee" is a bizarre story of a boy that is sleeping in his bed and he thinks he hears a banshee. A banshee for people that do not know, is a ghost of a women who comes to your house when death is near. Don't feel bad if you didn't know what a banshee was, because I didn't ether. The banshee is also a fable told in Ireland. Its only appropriate that is where the story takes place. The boy in the story hears the banshee and almost scared to death runs to his mother and asks for her help. The mother checks the room and there is nothing. There are no sounds or anything. The mother tells the boy to go to sleep and the boy gets in his bed. Again the boy hears the banshee and decides to make a deal with her. He will give the banshee his most prized item, a peacock feather. The boy runs outside and he thinks he sees the banshee. He runs up to it and it is just some laundry. He still leaves his peacock feather there out of fear. The story ends with the boy in his bed a sleep. There is no real moral to the story i assume. It just tells the story of the old Irish fable. ( )

I would only read this to children that I knew could take it. I have to confess I was a little frightened while reading it. The ghost stories that we hear as children can really take hold in our imagination. I bet everyone has experience thinking a sound, that turns out to be nothing, is a horrible monster coming to get them. ( )

In this book, Eve Bunting takes a walk on the scary side. Great for Halloween, the main plot of the book is an apparent Banshee problem. A young boy is startled awake by a noise. When he goes to his mother about it, she assures him that nothing is wrong. After being sent back to his room, he hears the noise again, he is convinced that the Banshee is after him. He goes into the yard, and discovers that the Banshee noise is actually just a tin bucket with a hole in it being noisy in the wind.

This could potentially be a bit scary for younger audiences, as there is the repeated shocking image of the supposed Banshee. Great story nonetheless, and given that the book even explains where the Banshee originated from (Irish folktale), the multicultural aspect is easy to see. ( )

Another wonderful halloween book! The Banshee is also very cultural since the Irish believe in banshee's. I had to re-read this book twice in order to catch the cultural aspect of it. Again, I would read this book around halloween time but also explain the culture behind it. ( )