Karen Upper asked Philippa Dowding:

What inspired you to write these great urban legend/scary stories like Jake and Myles?

Philippa Dowding Hi Karen, thanks for the great question! I've always loved spooky stories for kids, and when my own kids came along I realized that I wasn't the only one. My daughter and I read every Goosebumps we could find, and we were sad when the final books came out in the early 2000s. So, I've wanted to write a Goosebumps-like story for modern kids since then (Kirkus Reviews nicely compared the books to Goosebumps). This series is called Weird Stories Gone Wrong and each one, Jake and the Giant Hand, Myles and the Monster Outside, Carter and the Curious Maze, is a story I've wanted to tell since then.
Each one is a different kind of spooky story for middle-grade kids: a tall tale riffing on Jack and the Beanstalk (what happened to the giant after Jack smote him?), a psychological road-trip thriller/ghost story with an anxious boy who keeps seeing things out the car window, and a time-travel story set in a creepy maze at the fair.
It's such an honour to finally see them in print, thank you to my publisher Dundurn Press for that! Also, thank you to the wonderful illustrator, Shawna Daigle, who did the covers and all the inside illustrations which are deliciously creepy. And, there may be more books in the near future, I'm toying with aliens and steampunk! Hope this answers your question.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2...

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