Let's be honest:, Poe's pretty mild. He's not exactly ripping off bodices in "Usher," but that doesn't mean you won't face some challenges teaching this story.

First, if there's one thing you have to know about Poe, it's that he didn't shrink away from dense language. Though this style of writing may have been de rigueur for the 1800s, our kids are used to tweeting through their day, and 140 characters looks really different from 140 lines. By the time they get to line 30 of this story, they might find their eyelids feeling like lead weights.