Children’s Horror Fiction: Grzegorz Gortat’s Ewelina and the Black Bird and Don’t Wake Me Up Just Yet

Summary This article attempts to profile the children’s horror story, aka children’s Gothic, by examining two notable examples of this autonomous sub-genre, Grzegorz Gortat’s Ewelina i Czarny Ptak [Ewelina and the Black Bird] and Nie budź mnie jeszcze [Don’t Wake Me Up Just Yet], published in 2013 in the teasingly named series ‘Lepiej w to uwierz!’ [You’d better believe it]. A close reading of both novels shows that their effect depends on the use of a range of motifs and archetypes of fear within a broad, carnivalesque narrative strategy. Another distinctive feature of Gortat’s children’s horror novel is its symbolism. The symbolic meanings are explained and included in the interpretation of each novel. Finally, the article argues that this type of rite-of-passage scary fantasy is both appropriate and stimulating for school-age children.