The Covers of Tales for the Midnight Hour

Cover artist unknown

Great ghosts! I think it's time for our first gallery of frightful covers. The series I elected to spotlight may be modest in number, but it is one that for all its abbreviated length still resonated deeply with me during my prime School Book Scare days...

Biographical information on Judith Bauer Stamper is scarce, but what we can tell from her bibliography is that she worked steadfastly as a freelance author on The Magic School Bus chapter books, both fiction and nonfiction beginning readers, and teaching resources for educators. She would sometimes be credited by her full name, sometimes as "Judith B. Stamper", or, in the case of today's subject, "J. B. Stamper". 

Those of you quick on the draw might assume, as I had, that these collections of shivery shorts and the double initials of the author's name were specifically meant to cash in on the Goosebumps bandwagon. But chronologically speaking, this would be an impossibility. The first Tales for the Midnight Hour, from which this cover was sourced (not a personal copy, BTW), was published in 1977 when Scholastic was barely out of short pants. The double abbreviation could have been suggested by Stamper or Scholastic as a means of masking her identity (re: convincing young readers that she was a dude) or as a means to creatively disassociate this book from the rest of Stamper's oeuvre. Stamper was too good at writing these that I don't suspect she had any distaste for horror and, anyway, she would go on to pen the spooky collections Night Frights and More Night Frights (both 1993) and Wait Until Dark (1999), not to mention the Five Spooky Stories series for younger readers. 

And then maybe none of these things are true! Isn't speculation fun?

The cover below comes from the edition of the first book that I and I assume many others are most familiar with:

Artwork by Robert Roper 

Although the front page copyright to this edition still lists the original 1977 publication date, the handy-dandy artist credit at the bottom clues us in that Tales for the Midnight Hour was republished in 1986. It would seem that horror was on Scholastic's mind as its Point imprint was just beginning its onslaught of printed terror by this time. (It was the same year that R. L. Stine's Blind Date was published.) And thus began a mini-campaign of kiddie scares with "J. B. Stamper" at the helm: Tales for the Midnight Hour would see three sequels over the course of the next five years. Behold, More Tales for the Midnight Hour (1987)!

Cover artist unknown

And guess what came after that? That's right: Still More Tales for the Midnight Hour (1989)!

Cover artist unknown

When will this madness end? Oh, with Even More Tales for the Midnight Hour (1991). In October, no less. 

Cover artist unknown

That's another chicken-and-the-egg equation that I originally had all wrong. I had thought that the silly titling scheme of "more", "even mostest", etc. had been a patent of R. L. Stine's Tales to Give You Goosebumps collections. But, lo! Scholastic had that formula down pat half-a-year before the very first Goosebumps book made its mewling entry into the world. How about that!

These books hold a special place in my heart because they actually represent, to the best of my recollection, the very last purchase that I made from the Scholastic Book Fair. This would have been in sixth grade, my first year of middle school. I can remember sitting in Mrs. Miller's social studies class when a student courier came through the classroom door and brought the plastic-wrapped set of books directly to my desk. Hand-delivered! What elation and geekery I felt in that moment. I don't remember if I tore it open right then and there (probably) or if I abstained until I got home, but either way the spooky story love was beating fiercely in my blood. 

It was, as it turned out, both a homecoming and the end of an era. Years before (third grade? fourth?), I stumbled upon a worn copy of Still More Tales... in the spinner rack of my elementary school library. Like others who have commented on this series, Stamper wrote stories that really stuck in my mental craw, with images that would haunt the house of my brain for years afterward. When I spied the full book set in the Scholastic Book Fair catalog, I jumped at the chance to acquire them. Little did I know at the time that this would be my last real exposure to the book fair. (As I remember, there wasn't even a room set up to house the delicious spread. I just sent in my order anonymously and received the parcel however many weeks later.) The book fair would become a relic of elementary days gone by, with the purchase of this series standing as one last hurrah.

But, of course, if ever I wish to regain that feeling of dark magic, all I have to do is take out one of these slim little volumes and give it a read. And what better time to do that than when clock strikes twelve?