Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark: parents' guide

Mostly bloodless but intense: a bully is run through with a pitchfork and straw spills out, a corpse drags a boy under a bed, a creature built from body parts snaps a police chief's neck, and people are beaten, pulled by the hair and dragged across floors.

About ten s-words and one possible f-word, plus 'asshole,' 'damn,' 'hell,' 'goddamn,' 'turd' and frequent misuse of God's name. A racial slur aimed at a Latino teen is both spoken aloud and written out.

A boy's novelty pen shows a woman whose swimsuit slides away when tilted, though she is never fully bare. Teens flirt, and there are crude jokes about arousal and a character called a 'perv.'

A teen bully and his friends are drunk on Halloween night, slurring and smashing beer bottles, and one teen's mother asks whether he's drunk again.

Sustained terror: a scarecrow comes to life, a pale, bloated woman slowly closes in on a boy, spiders burst from a girl's swollen cheek, and a jangling creature hunts the teens. Teens play a tape of a young woman screaming as she is given shock treatment, and she is said to have hanged herself.