I am a huge fan of Poe, and I have read "The Tell-Tale Heart" several times. This time, reading the Creative Classic Series version, I still enjoyed the story. However, with all due respect for Byron Glaser's talent, I did not feel that the illustrations particularly added to the story experience. They did, however, make the story a little more fun for the child reader without distracting from the power of the text itself. A short biography of Edgar Allan Poe appears at the end, geared specifically toward young readers. If you want to introduce your child to Poe's short stories, this might be the book to get. ( )

One of my favourite short stories! What a build-up and what a climax! Read this ages ago but still haven't forgotten the impact.

The story is in the public domain, so you can read it online for free. Here's one such link: https://americanenglish.state.gov/files/ae/resource_files/the_tell-tale_heart_0....

Enjoy! ( )

Poe does the macabre with such mastery and finesse, and The Tell Tale Heart is one of his best efforts. In a very few pages, Poe takes us into the mind of a madman, through the act of murder, and into the horror of the beating heart of a dead man. I was very pleased with revisiting this tale. I will now revisit the rest of Poe's works. ( )

I’ve been trying to read short stories lately and I am so lucky that this is the first one I tried. It definitely is a gem. The narration is incredibly good. The patterns of events leading to the climax until the end is absolutely perfect. ( )

A master of the Gothic short story, this tale of delusion and madness makes for great reading. Often used in conjunction with other tales for exploring themes of loneliness, psychological understanding, dark and gloomy settings, memory, loss, suffering, and death.

Many of Poe's stories have a connection to his own life and paint the picture of the writer as a sad and lonely man lost amidst ghosts of his past.

The Tell-Tale Heart focuses on a young man who is a caretaker of an older gentleman. The older gentleman has two different eyes (perhaps from age or disease) one of which is described as "vulture-like" by the narrator. The young man grows obsessed with this eye and cannot stand it. He commits an act against the old man and spends much of the tale protesting to authorities about how sane he is while describing the cold, calculated, and methodical things he did. In the end, the young man is more driven mad by his own psychosis than anything else.

Recommended for readers as young as middle-grades (6-8).

**All thoughts and opinions are my own.** ( )

I should not have read this before bed. I knew I shouldn't, and yet I did it anyway.

It wasn't scary per se, but it left a lingering creepy sensation hiding in the dark recesses of my mind.

Definitely worth a read! ( )

I should not have read this before bed. I knew I shouldn't, and yet I did it anyway.

It wasn't scary per se, but it left a lingering creepy sensation hiding in the dark recesses of my mind.

Definitely worth a read! ( )

We read this story in eighth grade English. After we read it the teacher decided that we would have a trial to see if the killer was insane or not. I picked the side of sanity.

I was originally supposed to play a bit role, the assistant lawyer, I think. It quickly became apparent I was a better arguer than the guy who was supposed to be lawyer, so I took the role. And you bet I played into it. While the lawyer on the other side stayed seated, I stood up and loomed over the table-as-jury-box, getting completely into the role. There were laughs in the audience. I didn't care. I was going to win this trial. The question that cinched the outcome?

"Were you aware of what you were doing?"

"Yes," said the killer. The case was closed from there, my side won. I think I got ten extra credit points or something.

Jokes on them though.

He's totally insane. ( )

It makes perfect sense
his eye was creepy, you see
damn that pesky noise! ( )

A very dark story about a man's descent into madness. I really enjoyed Poe's unique, somewhat poetic, writing style. Perfect for my Halloween reading. ( )

An unnamed narrator who is telling this story plots to kill an elderly man because he hates his horrible and scary "vulture eye"...

Enjoyable, atmospheric, fast and creepy read. Poe was a great storyteller! ( )

I really love this story. We read this is school and it really was the only story ever that I liked and was forced to read in school. It really stuck in my head and I just got the urge to read it again. And it is awesomely creep this time as it was when I first read it in school. ( )

I think I overdid the Poe a bit... As well as this little book with just 3 stories I was reading the larger Tales of Mystery and Imagination. However 2 out of the 3 in this book are amongst the best ones (The Cask of Amontillado is a bit meh). The Telltale Heart is a brilliant, very short descent into madness. The Fall of the House of Usher is a longer brooding eerie tale. And these 'little black classics' are very nice, well-presented books. ( )

What a quick little stab of the macabre this tale is! It's a classic example of the unreliable narrator, who tries desperately to convince the reader of his sanity even as he stalks, kills, dismembers, and buries an old man for no other reason than that the man's eye "resembled that of a vulture." Of course the harder he tries to convince the reader of his sanity, the more insane you realize he is: "You should have seen how wisely I proceeded--with what caution--what what foresight--with what dissimulation I went to work!"

This tale is also interesting in its use of the Ancient Greek technique of beginning "in medias res"--or in the middle of things. There's no preamble, no setting of the scene. Here's how the story begins: "True!--nervous--very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why will you say that I am mad?" You immediately get the sense that the narrator is reacting to something or someone, perhaps an unnamed interlocutor who's just told him he's mad. Or perhaps he's simply arguing or contending with himself? With a narrator like this, you never know, which is why I love unreliable narrators. There's no stability, no objectivity--everything is a shifting sand of the mind. ( )

My three star rating is not actually for "The Tell-Tale Heart," which is perfect for what it is -- a tightly composed narration of a mad act -- but, rather, for the collection I just read, No. 31 in Penguin's Little Black Classics series. The (short) book starts with "The Tell-Tale Heart," but also includes "The Fall of the House of Usher" and "The Cask of Amontillado." The "Cask," like "Tell-Tale Heart," is a story I read first in high school, and then a time or two since, and I know it made quite an impression on me when I first read it, as it's stuck with me all these years. Didn't grab me this time, for some reason, but I blame "The Fall of the House of Usher," which came before and bored the heck out of me. It just seemed like the build up lasted Forever, and the payoff failed to dazzle. The gloomy , isolated old mansion, with the dripping trees and miasmas, and the family curse were all awesome, but ... well. I think maybe the "hints" were just so clear that there was no surprise. ( )

The last time I read this story was in high school and it was great and it is still a great short story. Tell you the truth, I just forgot how short it was. I really like the flow of the story, it has a great rhythm and tempo to it. ( )

One of my absolute favorite Poe stories:

Written by a murderer with uncredited sanity. He tells the story of his gruesome murder of an old man with a distressing vulture eye which the murderer has a unhealthy hatred of. He hides the dismembered body beneath the floor supposedly hearing his heartbeat where it is hidden. Which only discredits his sanity further.
Beautifully written, I think this tale truly puts you in the mind of this murderer who thinks he's sane but really is far from, or maybe makes you question what sanity really is. ( )

Three classic short stories from E.A.Poe. What can I say what hasn’t been told countless times about them. Perfection. ( )

Excellent.
I love Poe so much. I had no idea these comics existed.

I love the new way these stories are being portrayed. Brings new life to old classics. ( )

Here we have a narrator who keeps telling the reader he's not mad yet in doing so he comfirms his insanity! ( )

Great short story that epitomizes the short story and Poe's horror genre. ( )

weird ( )

Another audio voiced by Basil Rathbone and Vincent Price, done so fantastically and eerie. This story is another very famous on from Edgar Allen Poe and it is wonderful on audio. Opens up the conversation about guilt and consequences. As well as thinking hard before you act. ( )

The Tell Tale Heart
A Book Review By Marcella Leonard-Jackson
Loser, stupid, ugly, worthless are all names people hate being called, but for the narrator of the tell tale heart it is mad. He is an anonymous narrator who insists he is sane, because everyone calls him a mad man. He lives with an old man who is very wealthy, and nice to him. The narrator admits that he loves the old man, because he’d never wronged him. But the narrator is suffering from “nervousness” which causes his senses to be very acute. The old man has a cloudy, blue vulture’s eye that makes the narrators blood “grow cold.” “I love the old man, and hate only his evil eye.” So as a result to his hatred for the man’s eye he plans a murder. He states clearly that his intentions had nothing to do with the man’s money. He plans a very careful murder so good, that he exclaims that he can’t possibly mad. “How would a mad man be able to plan such a genius and careful murder?” He is to start with a one week routine then he is to finally kill the man. But the routine is ruined by the man’s “evil eye.” On the night it is to finally happen things go horribly wrong. The narrator slips up, makes a noise, and the old man awakens. The narrator stays extremely still for a while hoping that the old man will just go back to sleep. The narrator is surprised that even after the long period of time that has gone by the old man still hasn’t fallen asleep. Because of the narrator’s acute senses he can very clearly hear the old man’s heart beating loudly and hard from terror of the anonymous other presence in his room. Finally after growing impatient the narrator went to kill him, and with a scream the man was dead. The narrator buried the man under the floorboards, getting rid of all evidence of the crime. The next morning the police show up at the narrator’s house from a report of a scream last night. The narrator covers his tracks with a story, and so confident in his work invites the officers in for some friendly conversation. Where they sit in the old man’s room on the exact spot he was buried under. But the narrator soon becomes uncomfortable when he starts to hear the old man’s heart beat under the floorboards and is sure that the police hear it as well.
Edgar Allen Poe is a great author with famous stories like “The Fall of the House of Usher”, “The Cask of Amontillado” etc. His ominous and enigmatic stories are very thought out, entertaining, and will definitely have you on the edge of your seat until the end. The Tell Tale Heart is an astonishing story, but I definitely recommend it for mature audiences. It’s certainly centered on your conscious and the power right and wrong have. I loved The Tell tale Heart, and I think that anyone who can understand the story on a deep level will love it to.

Very Short.
Very Very Thrilling story.

Brings up the excitement with full acceleration in just a paragraph.
Then keeps it up till the very end - ending with a big bang.

I think I did hear my heart.
My adrenaline must have been pumping it fast. :) ( )