Some Things Are Scary

"With perceptive examples and over-the-top images of physical comedy, Heide and Feiffer acknowledge, and perhaps demystify, some shared fears." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

You’re skating downhill, but you don’t know how to stop. You’re having your hair cut, and you suddenly realize . . . they’re cutting it too short. There’s no question about it: some things are scary. And never have common bugaboos been exposed with more comic urgency than in this masterful mix of things horrible and humiliating, monstrous or merely unsettling. Perfectly pitched to a kid’s perspective, Florence Parry Heide’s witty text and Jules Feiffer’s over-the-top illustrations will get even the most anxious recipients laughing, while reassuring them (no matter how old they are) that they’re not alone in their fears."Using childlike phrasing, Heide (The Shrinking of Treehorn) makes a list of anxiety-provoking moments-in-progress. She suggests that everyday problems ('Finding out your best friend has a best friend that isn't you/ is scary') can be as startling as daydreams ('Thinking what if you'd been born a hippopotamus/ is scary'). Feiffer's hyperactive sketches seek an edge between silly and horrible—not unlike embarrassment—and the design shows off the visual and verbal pacing. The frantic boy, always tiptoeing and suffering from indecision, floats in negative space and never comes to rest. With perceptive examples and over-the-top images of physical comedy, Heide and Feiffer acknowledge, and perhaps demystify, some shared fears." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)Florence Parry Heide (1919-2011) was an award-winning author of more than fifty children’s books. She said of Some Things Are Scary, "What scared me as a child was that I’d never learn how to be a real live grownup - and the fact is, I never did find out how it goes."

Jules Feiffer (1929-2025) was a Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist, a renowned playwright and screenwriter, and the illustrator of the children’s classic The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster. He also wrote and illustrated several other acclaimed children’s books. He says, "When I was a child, everything was scary - especially parents!"