Strange towers and creepy houses

Thomas' frightening castle!

Shhh! tiptoe up the stairs!

the door creaks open....

The floorboards groan under tentative toes...

The swamp heaves and waits. Wetly.

In a dark castle beyond the mountains...

Castle's were popular subjects....

we even got Mums and Dads
to make their own story-cards!

A Summer Reading Challenge workshop for Nottinghamshire Libraries. In magnificent West Bridgford Library (well done, West B for making sure this was built! What a place!), an intrepid company gathered to turn their own ideas about spooky houses and sinister settings into pop-up cards

We gathered our first ideas into a collective poem

Crescent moon, full moon, no moon at all! 

The ghost train will bring you 

Along the haunted line,

Past golden palaces and beautiful gardens

To the Creepy House.
Full of bats and spiders,
Cobwebs and ghosties
Watching from windows.

monkeys rather than crows, but still watchful!

Crows sitting on treetops
Spy on everything
And bats flap
Through the woods.
A strange dark figures
Walks silently down the long path
Through the wood of dead trees.

Graveyards and tombstones
A witch fies across the moon
Creepers that catch you
Vampires that follow you

Milly's House

Milly* told us a story of
a girl who went on adventure with a pocketful of apples. She bravely walked up to the front of the spooky house and knocked on the door....
"What would you taste like?", 
"Squashed slugs!" she said. 
"I like slugs" said he. 
"But i am as tough as an old tree", said she
"If you bite me, your teeth will break!" 
He smiles and there are no teeth left in his mouth....

Fintan went for swamps

while Tristan preferred the beach

There was a terrible news about Tristan's beach pop-up because just after he made it, he disappeared from his bedroom. But a small boy's face could be seen looking out of one of the windows in the huts. The face wasn't there before...

...but almost anything is better than disappearing
 in the swamp in Rowan's story

Charlotte sent divers deep under the sea

I love the detail here!

a dragon in a cave!

(* my apologies to anyone whose name I've got wrong! Let me know and I'll correct them)