Aaron Waldrep stood over a tree covered in spider webs with a severed, bloody head hanging from it and laughed. As he talked, an enormous green spider sat still on a bed of rocks while the piercing gaze of a green demon’s glowing red eyes cut through the crowded room.
The whole scene looked like a horror novel had come to life, and that’s exactly what Waldrep was going for.
The twelve-year-old was standing in front of his reading fair project, which he did on the Goosebumps book “One Day at Horrorland,” for the district reading fair Wednesday.
Waldrep was one of hundreds of children across Warren County to participate in the fair, with books that ranged from classics like “Tom Sawyer” to new best sellers like “The Fault in Our Stars.”

“What I liked is how the monsters were trying to scare the family,” Waldrep said about the book he chose. “They get enjoyment by it. I like reading scary stuff. It inspires me to read more.”
Putting together a project like this one was a family affair that the Waldreps eagerly embraced. Both his mom and dad helped during the process, from coming up with ideas to running the electrical wire up the board that lighted the eyes and fingernails of the demon in the middle of the trifold.
“Him and his mother completed it and we started it, so it was a family effort,” his father Randy Waldrep said. “It was great. We got kind of in the middle of it and I went abroad for my work, so he put a lot of it together and finished it on his own. I was really proud of him to put the effort in and finish it.”
The sixth grader said his favorite part in the creation process was forming the mask of the demon, which was created out of papier-mâché.
“It was a new experience for me doing papier-mâché for the mask, so I liked doing that and all the electric work,” he said.
The elder Waldrep believes projects like this nurture a growing love for reading by allowing students to pick their own books and complete hands-on projects that cater to their interests.
“You find something that they like and enjoy, he’s going to be more apt to read,” he said. “My favorite part I guess would have to be the head. We wanted to make it more realistic and scary because he enjoys the scary part. That was the whole idea, to not make it cartoonish but to make it real and scary.”
The younger Waldrep enjoys building things and reading, so putting the two together was a match made in heaven for both him and his project grade.
“My main quality is hands-on, so these projects help make my quality stronger. That’s what I really enjoy about it,” he said. “What I did was, I got a notebook and started designing what I’d like to put on the board. Then I just came up with this masterpiece.”