Revenge of the Dolls

by Carol Beach York

Alice, Trissy and their cousin Paulie are visitors in the dark old house of Aunt Sarah and faded, middle-aged Cousin Grace. It's a grim house, filled with shadows, and Aunt Sarah matches it -- old, bitter, silent, wrapped up in the crude and ugly dolls she has devoted herself or making. They talked to her, she said. The girls never dared to touch Aunt Sarah's dolls, but Paulie was different. He threw one in the fire, as the other dolls watched with their glittering button eyes. Now Aunt Sarah was making another doll just like him. "It's for Paulie," she said. A master of suspense and mood relates one of her most chilling tales in this story of three children and their brush with the madness of an evil old woman and the little dolls that do her bidding.

Genres: Horror, Middle Grade, Childrens, Fantasy

108 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1979

Reviews

[Grady Hendrix]

No thank you.

[Grace Chan]

I am a loyal and biased CBY fan and love pretty much everything I've read by her!
Moody and atmospheric, CBY sucks you right into the stark wintry scenery and straight into the heart and mind of our little protag, Alice.

Alice, her sister and their parents have to go visit creepy old Aunt Sarah and their "faded, middle-aged" Cousin Grace (HAHA IT ME). Their little cousin Paulie and his parents go to visit as well. In all of CBY's novels I've read, there are always 2 distinct sides-- the Kids vs. the Olds and CBY has always been Team Kid all the way. We see withered and mean old Aunt Sarah through the eyes of little Alice, and the fear and repulsion she feels for Aunt Sarah and her gross little dolls that she makes from scraps of fabric, buttons for eyes, and crude smears of lipstick for mouths. When their rowdy little cousin Paulie tosses one of the dolls into the fire, the girls KNOW there will be trouble. After all, Aunt Sarah claims the dolls talk to her and act as her eyes and ears. Ew!!

So as retribution, evil old Aunt Sarah creates a special doll, "just for Paulie". The doll is modeled after Paulie dressed as a little pirate, holding a sharp-ass half of a scissor for the sword. Hmm, what could possibly go wrong??

This was a book full of evil toys, evil old people, and the innocence yet shrewdness of the our little protag as she tries to save her cousin from her mad old Aunt. A quick easy read, with that classic chilling ending that CBY always nails, will stay with you for some time.

5 out of 5 slashes from the sword of the evil little pirate doll. There's no escape. The dolls always know.

[Qt]

Well-written and quite eerie!

[Erica Leigh]

“They saw you, Paulie. They saw what you did.”

Creepy and unsettling

[Kate]

I remember this book being REALLY creepy. I always thought dolls were creepy, but these take the cake. They're all mishapen and poorly constructed with "glittering button eyes" (there are also illustrations - just check out the one on the cover) and apparently, these dolls will try to kill you, especially if you throw one of them into a fire. Definitely check this one out if you like creepy stories.

[Hilary]

Creepy! Nasty-faced vengeful dolls with lopsided painted faces -- hunting children for perceived slights... A wicked old crone... Strange, uncomfortable grown-ups... Very atmospheric.

Short but memorable. Would make a great campfire story.

[Donna Thompson]

Very creepy, atmospheric little tale, with a lot more going on in it than meets the eye. I love running across forgotten little gems like this. You can't find books like this anymore today.

[Stephanie A.]

And is the revenge in the room with us right now...?

The atmospheric writing here is spectacular -- from the first page of this tiny volume, I felt like I was in the scene. I genuinely feel like I've just spent a spring break in an old, beautiful but decaying house with a creeping atmosphere of Dread. I would have thrilled deliciously to the chills and thrills this book promises as a kid. Maybe I even would have liked the subtle implications of the quasi-cliffhanger ending?

But right now I'm just like, I'm sorry, I was promised a doll that would get REVENGE, not a little girl chickening out of mailing the Revenge Package and burying the evil in the garden instead, so that nothing bad actually happens to Paulie (whom I hope dies in an arson fire later on).

Yes, it's spooky that the package is empty and ~hacked and slashed open~ as if from inside, perhaps from its former inhabitant, a little pirate doll with a very small but sharp blade made from a pair of nail scissors. A blade it would perhaps have used on Paulie in his sleep, had it made it there.

An act I suppose, my imagination supplies now, could still happen, depending on how intuitive the doll is and how long it takes it to hunt Paulie down...

Still not gonna get it to 5 stars, especially given the obvious dog-murder that happened before their arrival, but I still liked it very much. If not for the aforementioned dog murder, I would be very much on Aunt Sarah's side. Buncha busybody relatives...scheming to get my house...bringing their horrible little child... I'm just saying, I think we should consider that she was provoked.

[Donna]

Alice grows worried when her cousin throws one of her Aunt Sarah's creepy dolls in the fire - will the other dolls come after them?

This was published in 1979 and is very old-school: slow, leisurely build-up, kids that are afraid to say anything to parents, people who are polite even when they're talking about 'putting away' good old Aunt Sarah. I read it as kid and apparently liked it then (since I kept it) but I had no actual memory of the story even while re-reading it. It's a short, tension-building story that's worth the hour it takes to read.

[Ryan LaBee]

I heard Grady Hendrix recommend this little mid-grade book about evil dolls on an episode of Books in the Freezer podcast. It was well-written and creepy, but it didn’t have the punch of an ending I would have liked. That being said, it was intended for a much younger audience, and I could see a 9 to 13-year-old being pretty creeped out by this tale of makeshift dolls with painted-on smiles and dead eyes.

[Adam Collier]

Pretty good fiction book, a little short, a little disturbing, but it accomplishes what it was written to accomplish. Good character development. York seems like a good author and I’d be willing to read her other works.

[Shraddha Saraf]

A full five for the atmosphere and the style of storytelling. Superbly crafted. The story was left to the imagination of the readers and very well so. Not quite hard to decipher what happens at the end. A quick and interesting read.

[Amber]

My sister told me that I would like this book. She is wrong. No dolls killing. Just a crazy insane old lady who talks to her dolls..

[Magdalene Jardine]

What happened to Cousin Grace? Dont introduce me to someone so miserable and sad and let her fate trail off into nothingness!!! All atmosphere and no story. But thats okay I guess.

[Joe Gorzkowski]

I would expect a book called “Revenge of the Dolls” to have the dolls to get their revenge.

[Madame Jane]

Not so much horror or mystery. The family comes to collect on property and place Aunt Sarah out of sight. Alice is a perceptive child who knows what the adults intentions are. Of course a naughty boy cousin comes over and ruins things.

Re-read on January 12, 2024
"Our visit to Aunt Sarah's came to an end. We left as we had come, under chill, dark skies".

"I closed my eyes to shut out the burning doll. The living room was very quiet. No outside sounds intruded. No bird call or car horn. The country was always so quiet at night...as I think graveyards must be".

[Melissa]

This gets one star only because I can't give it less. Terrible.

[Lambknitj]

I thought it had promise. Starts out okay, then builds up to scare you, and then.........nothing. A waste of time to read this one, even though it was really short.

[Nicole Westen]

It felt like there was a lot of missed potential with the plot. But it might not be bad for a child in elementary school, not too scary.

[A. Mickey Perkins]

There's no plot until the last page, and frankly this whole story could have been shortened by about 75 pages where nothing happened.