#im beginning to think it was like. well books werent really self-published to the degree that they got in school libraries back then

[july-19th-club]

experiencing my twice-yearly obsessive dive onto the internet to search for a book i read once in third grade, never forgot, except for the title and the author, so i can only describe it to people and nobody EVER knows which book i'm talking about. and because it was a collection of children's scary stories in a time (the late nineties/early oughts) absolutely SATURATED with scary stories for children, that makes it even harder to track down this one specific and apparently hyper-obscure book

anyway it was a rather large (like...12-inch? 18-inch?) book and had color illustrations that have a quality similar to those of geraldine mccaughrean, but they're NOT her work, they just look familiar if you've seen her work, and of the three stories i remember from it were one about a man with a hook and a lantern and two kids walking home (through the woods?) at night (NOT man door hand hook car door though). one about a kid who kept seeing a black dog outside his window at school and there mightve been something to do with his father (dead? abroad??) involved in that story. and one about a boy who is trying to make his blankie go AWAY but it wont go away. keeps coming back. distinctly recall an illustration of his dog happily holding this blankie, which was blue. and i have NEVER found this book and once or twice a year i get wild with need to look for it and i never find it anyway does anybody know what im talking about