Hairs rising on the back of your neck? Lips curling up into a wince? Palms a little sweaty? These are tell-tale signs that you are in the grips of suspense.

But what attracts us to suspense? What keeps us from closing the book or changing the channel? What compels us to experience in stories the very things we spend our lives trying to avoid?

Those are the questions your students will explore in this Grade 8 unit.

Alfred Hitchcock. Stephen King. Edgar Allan Poe. The masters of suspense are at work in this unit, and after reading classic thrillers, your students will try their own hands at the genre, applying what they have learned about suspense to their own narrative writing projects. Students will begin this unit as readers, brought to the edge of their seats by hair-raising tales, and they will finish as writers, leading you and their peers through hair-raising stories of their own.