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The Big Toe — Kitty: ⭐⭐ Winterjoy: ⭐⭐⭐
I have a friend that I’ve known since second grade named Winterjoy. She was my best friend throughout all my elementary and middle school years, and we are still close all these years later. We love to share memories together and get nostalgic for our childhood days. One of these things is the iconic Scary Stories to Tell In The Dark by Alvin Schwartz with illustrations by Stephen Gammell.
Winterjoy attends a book club in her state, and I’ve been reading the books with her and reviewing them on this blog. This has been really fun, but since we don’t live in the same state, I can’t attend the club meetings. I thought it would be lots of fun to read a story a month from the Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark series, so we decided to create a little friend-to-friend reading club of our own.
We named it The Super Cool Scary Stories Book Club Thing, which I think is a very funny title. Winterjoy came up with that. She’s a lot funnier than I am.
We both own Scary Stories Treasury, which was published by HarperCollins in 2013. This is the book we will be reading from.
We will read one story a month, starting with the first story of the first book. I came up with seven points that I thought we’d touch on while discussing the stories. I realize some of them might not be answerable due to the short length of some of the stories, but I think we did a pretty good job for the first one.
The first section in the book is a collection of jump-scare stories. These are meant to be read aloud to a group. Actually, these stories come from folklore, so they should all be read aloud to enjoy them thoroughly.
The first story is entitled The Big Toe.
A boy was digging at the edge of the garden when he saw a big toe. He tried to pick it up, but it was stuck to something. So he gave it a good hard jerk, and it came off in his hand. Then he heard something groan and scamper away.
The boy took the toe into the kitchen, and showed it to his mother. “It looks nice and plump,” she said. I’ll put it in the soup, and we’ll have it for supper.”
That night, his father carved the toe into three pieces, and they each had a piece. Then they did the dishes, and when it got dark they went to bed.
The boy fell asleep almost at once. But in the middle of the night, a sound awakened him, It was something out in the street. It was a voice, and it was calling to him.
“Where is my to-o-o-o-o-e?” it groaned.
When the boy heard that, he got very scared. But he thought, “It doesn’t know where I am. It never will find me.”
Then he heard the voice once more. Only now it was closer.
“Where is my to-o-o-o-o-e?” it groaned.
The boy pulled the blankets over his head and closed his eyes. “I’ll go to sleep,” he thought. “When I wake up it will be gone.”
But soon he heard the back door open, and again he heard the voice.
“Where is my to-o-o-o-o-e?” it groaned.
Then the boy heard footsteps move through the kitchen into the dining room, into the living room, into the front hall. Then slowly they climbed the stairs.
Closer and closer they came. Soon they were in the upstairs hall. Now they were outside his door.
“Where is my to-o-o-o-o-e?” the voice groaned.
His door opened. Shaking with fear, he listened as the footsteps slowly moved through the dark toward his bed. Then they stopped.
“Where is my to-o-o-o-o-e?” the voice groaned.
(At this point, pause. Then jump at the person next to you and shout:)
“YOU’VE GOT IT!!!“
§ § § § § § §
It has an alternate version in the book, too, in which something crawls out of his chimney and the boy asks it, in red-riding hood fashion, what its big eyes, big mouth, and big teeth are for. The answers are, respectively, “to see you through and through”, “to swallow you”, and “to chomp your bones!”.
This story reminds me of the very first jump-scare story that I ever heard. My dad told us kids the Story of the Golden Arm when we were really little. We thought it was hilarious when dad would deliver the last line, and we’d beg him to tell it over and over.
Click here to hear a live retelling of The Golden Arm as told by Jackie Torrence at the 1986 National Storytelling Festival in Jonesborough, Tennessee. https://blogs.loc.gov/folklife/2018/10/get-ready-for-halloween-with-jackie-torrences-the-golden-arm/
The Golden Arm is not alone in being a variant to The Big Toe. In fact, most cultures have some version of the story, and many times it involves cannibalistic themes, as our story The Big Toe does. Often it is an even more gory telling. There are Hispanic tellings where the entrails are cut out and eaten. A Brothers Grimm telling tells of a woman who went to the gallows to cut out a man’s liver, as she has nothing to serve her guests. In North Carolina, there is a close variation of the alternate version of The Big Toe. A man is roasting potatoes, and he sees a human toe in it. He leaves the toe to the last, but he is still hungry, so he eats it. A wampus is the creature that appears, though it appears on the roof rather than climbing down the chimney, and the same questions are asked. In England, the story of Teeny Tiny is told, and she takes a bone home that she intends on including in her soup and goes to sleep. She is awakened multiple times to a voice saying “Give me my bone” and finally, she yells “Take it!” and gives it back. Another Grimm telling has a child who is born with a golden leg and a diamond one. When the child dies, the mother feels that it is a waste to leave the legs in the grave, so she cuts them off and keeps them. The child comes back and asks for her legs back, and the mother finally gives them to her. The child is never seen again. There are so many variants of this tale that come out of so many different countries, ranging from cannibalism, to greed, but the one thing they all have in common is the corpse coming back. It is Aarne-Thompson tale type 366: A Corpse Claims Its Property. I’ll leave a link under the sources area so you can read about this index of folklore.
And now for the book club discussion part of the post.
Kitty
- In what environment did you read the story? Sitting in my cozy reading chair in the dark, surrounded by stuffed animals, lamp above me. The stuffed animals were there to save me if any scary toeless stranger were to enter my room during reading session.
- Do you remember having read this story as a kid? Yes, I did. I even remembered the weird alternate version.
- Analyze the actions of the characters in the story. Did they make sense? Would you have done anything differently? No, they did not make sense. I would not have picked up a toe and brought it home for a family meal.
- Which was your favorite and least favorite characters and why? My favorite was the father who somehow cut a big toe into three pieces so his whole family could be fed. Very frugal. My least favorite was the boy, because he apparently thinks toes grow in gardens just waiting to be harvested.
- What did you think of the storytelling style? The storytelling style was straightforward, and I had no issues with it.
- Examine the art for the story. What are your thoughts on it? Not sure if that is a shovel or a hoe that he is holding. Either way, he needs a new one. I like the dripping hands and shovel/hoe.
- Your overall rating and why: ⭐ ⭐ It is not the best jump scare story I ever heard. I like the one my dad told us about the golden arm.
Winterjoy
- In what environment did you read the story? I read this story in my room in my tiny apartment with my cat, Cubic, sleeping next to me.
- Do you remember having read this story as a kid? Yes, I vaguely remember a toe story as a kid.
- Analyze the actions of the characters in the story. Did they make sense? Would you have done anything differently? The actions of the characters are completely insane. I believe them all to be clinically insane, in fact. I would have, however, also hidden under my blankets if a toe-less stranger was entering my room.
- Which was your favorite and least favorite characters and why? My favorite character was the mother because she could recognize a nice, plump toe when she sees one and I can appreciate that. The stupid boy was my least favorite because he’s running all over gardens pulling toes off people.
- What did you think of the storytelling style? The storytelling built suspense and intrigue as to what would happen next.
- Examine the art for the story. What are your thoughts on it? I believe the art of this story is to be scary and it achieved that.
- Your overall rating: ⭐⭐⭐ I liked the insanity of eating toes but I wanted to meet the toe-less stranger.
I hope you enjoyed this post. I’m hoping to cover all of the stories in the Scary Stories books. There are many memories tied to these stories for me, and I am looking forward to doing research and sharing what I find with you.
Sources:
https://blogs.loc.gov/folklife/2018/10/get-ready-for-halloween-with-jackie-torrences-the-golden-arm/
https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc38314/m1/189/
The promised Aarne-Thompson index link: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aarne%E2%80%93Thompson%E2%80%93Uther_Index
You can get the book on Amazon here: https://a.co/d/fqLYwEZ
