Page Turners

The books in this collection include Ark Angel by Anthony Horowitz, which tells the story of the battle against a group of eco-terrorists and explores just how far people will go for what they believe in. The Graveyard Book tells the story of a child raised by ghosts, but in the hands of Neil Gaiman (a true master of fantasy writing) it becomes a surreal exploration of myth and magic.  The Hitchhiker, also by Horowitz, is a short story that never ceases to grip students, and I've never read it to a group without hearing an audible buzz of excitement as we reveal the twist at the end. 

Lovely Bones is written first-person from the persective of a murdered girl; the opening sets up the story in chilling fashion. World War Z, which is really for older teens, is a genuinely astonishing read that explores what would really happen, in a world with a UN and all the trappings of contemporary politics, if a zombie apocalypse took place.

The final extract is from Stephen King's It. In order to make it work, however, I abridged the first 6,000 words of the story into a two-page extract that retains King's genius at building tension while keeping the story manageable for a single lesson. It's a wonderful read, and I've yet to find a class who weren't chilled!

Click here for the complete collection of page turners.

It, by Stephen King  

The terror, which would not end for another twenty-eight years, began, so far as I know or can tell, with a boat made from a sheet of newspaper floating down a gutter swollen with rain.  

The boat bobbed, listed, righted itself again, dived bravely through treacherous whirlpools, and continued on its way down Witcham Street.   

It was the fall of 1957, and the houses were dark.  

There had been steady rain for a week now, and two days ago the winds had come as well. Most sections of Derry had lost their power, and it was not back on yet.  

A small boy in a yellow rain mac and red galoshes ran cheerfully along beside the newspaper boat. The rain tapped on the yellow hood of the boy’s mac, sounding to his ears like rain on a shed roof... a comfortable, almost cosy sound.   

The boy in the yellow rain mac was George Denbrough. He was six. His brother William – Bill – had made the boat beside which he now ran. He had made it sitting up in bed, his back propped against a pile of pillows, while their mother played Für Elise on the piano in the parlour and rain swept restlessly against his bedroom window.  

George paused, about three-quarters of the way down the block, at the edge of a deep ravine that ran on an almost exact diagonal to the street. He laughed aloud as the flowing water took his paper boat into scale-model rapids which formed in breaks in the tar. The urgent water had cut a channel and so his boat travelled from one side of Witcham Street to the other, the current carrying it so fast that George had to sprint to keep up with it.  

Water sprayed out from beneath his galoshes in muddy sheets as he ran toward his strange death.  

And the feeling which filled him during those final moments was simply a deep love for his brother Bill... and, ironically, a touch of regret that he couldn’t be here to share the moment.  

George was running fast but the water was faster and his boat was pulling ahead. He heard a deepening roar and saw that fifty yards further down the hill the water in the gutter was cascading into a storm-drain that was still open. The boat hung for a moment, whipped around, and then slipped down inside.   

“Scuttled!” George yelled, genuinely dismayed, and then one of his feet slipped and he went sprawling, skinning one knee and crying out in pain.   

The boat was gone.   

What a stupid way to lose his boat!  

He got up and walked over to the storm-drain, dropped to his knees and peered in. The water made a dank hollow sound as it fell into the darkness. It reminded him of—  

“Huh!” The sound was jerked out of him like it was on a string, and he recoiled as if it had pulled him back to life.  

There were yellow eyes in there: the sort of eyes he had always imagined but never actually seen down in the basement. It’s an animal, he thought incoherently, that’s all it is, some animal, maybe a housecat that got stuck down in there—  

He was ready to run, but then a voice—a perfectly reasonable and rather pleasant voice—spoke to him from inside the storm-drain.  

“Hi, Georgie,” it said.  

George blinked and looked again. He could barely credit what he saw; it was like something from a made-up story, or a movie that was set in one of those worlds where animals could talk and dance and sing. If he’d been ten years older, he wouldn’t have believed what he was seeing. But he wasn’t sixteen, he was six, and there was a clown in the storm-drain.  

The light in there was far from good, but it was good enough so that George Denbrough was sure of what he was seeing: a clown, like in the circus or on TV. He had a white face, and there were funny tufts of red hair on either side of his bald head, and there was a big clown-smile painted over his mouth.   

In one hand the clown held a bunch of balloons, all colours, like gorgeous ripe fruit. And in the other hand he held George’s newspaper boat.  

“Want your boat, Georgie?” The clown smiled.  

George smiled back. He couldn’t help it; it was the kind of smile you just had to answer.   

“I sure do,” he said.  

The clown laughed. “That’s good. And how about a balloon?”  

“Well . . . sure!” George reached forward, and then drew his hand back, only slightly reluctantly. “I’m not supposed to take stuff from strangers. My dad said so.”  

“Very wise of your dad,” said the clown in the storm-drain, smiling.   

How, George wondered, could I have thought his eyes were yellow? Really, they were a bright, dancing blue, the colour of his mum’s eyes, and Bill’s eyes.   

“That’s very wise indeed. Therefore I will introduce myself. I, Georgie, am Pennywise the Dancing Clown. Pennywise, meet George Denbrough. George, meet Pennywise. And now we know each other. I’m not a stranger to you, and you’re not a stranger to me. Kee-rect?”  

George giggled. “I guess so.” He reached forward again… then drew his hand back again. “How did you get down there?”   

“Storm just bleeeew me away,” Pennywise the Dancing Clown said. “It blew the whole circus away.” Then the clown met Georgie in the eyes and said: “Can you smell the circus, Georgie?”  

George leaned forward. Suddenly he could smell peanuts! Hot roasted peanuts! And vinegar! He could smell cotton candy and frying doughboys and the cheery aroma of midway sawdust, and there was the smell of animals and fireworks and… yet…  

And yet under it all was the smell of flood and decomposing leaves and dark storm-drains. And that smell was wet and rotten.  

But he wanted the other smells more…  

“I can smell it,” he said, as much to himself as the clown.  

“You want your boat, Georgie?” Pennywise asked, holding it up and smiling. He was wearing a baggy silk suit with great big orange buttons. A bright tie, electric-blue, flopped down his front, and on his hands were big white gloves, like the kind Mickey Mouse or Donald Duck wore.  

“Yes,” said George, looking with longing into the storm-drain.  

“And… a balloon?” The clown offered.  

“Do they float?” George asked, dreaming of becoming a balloon himself, and imagining himself drifting away on a gentle breeze and into a state of calm bliss.  

“Float?” The clown’s grin widened. “Oh yes, they do.” And then George saw the clown’s face change, and he felt its worm like fingers wrap around his arm. “Everything floats down here…” It said.