Halloween books are a treat for all ages.
Young more fearful children will be reassured by Todd Parr’s playful stick-figures The I’m Not Scared Book (Little Brown, ages 3-5). Parr offers the usual suspects- dark, airplanes, family arguments, and of course, “monsters and ghosts”. “I’m not scared when I see that they aren’t real,” says the text as a stick-figure alien, ghost and robots remove their costumes and reveal huge smiles.
Richard Egielski provides a friendly guide in The Sleepless Little Vampire (Scholastic, ages 4-6). What keeps a small vampire awake? A slew of silly sounds that urge participation as spider spits, “Thoop! Thoop!” , bats flits “Flappity!-Flap!” and werewolf bawls “AWHOO!- AWHOO!”. With all this opportunity for sound making, formerly scary things that go bump in the night become vehicles for fun.
Jan Thomas’ Pumpkin Trouble (Harper, ages 3-6) marks a return of slapstick heroes Pig, Mouse. Duck, discovering a pumpkin, plans to turn it into a jack-o-lantern surprise for his friends. But fishing out the last seed, he falls in and with Thomas’ typical high-drama hilarity becomes a sightless pumpkin monster who terrifies Pig, Mouse, and himself. Finally a barn intercedes, smashes the pumpkin and in one last silly twist, Duck becomes the hero for defeating their pumpkin pursuer.
Slightly older children will savor the safe-scary tingles of David LaRochelle, The Haunted Hamburger and Other Ghostly Stories (Dutton, ages 5-8) Franny and Frankie Ghost beg their father for a story and they get three terrifying tale that humans will find hysterical . A ghosts gets turned into a baby’s diaper and a girl ghoul loses a scare battle with a hamburger. Then worse yet the father remembers Big Bad Granny’s “long skinny arms, sharp pointy fingernails and terrible, terrible big red lips”. Threat of her tickles and lipstick kisses give him and readers as last laugh as his small knock impersonates Big Bad Granny.
Chris Gall’s Substitute Creacher (Little Brown, ages 5-8) stars a monstrous-looking substitute. Tentacled and one-eyed, it spouts cautionary poems to misbehaving students and wins their compassion on revealing his thievery and its result. The Creacher has fallen under the spell of a gnome until his debt is paid back. Creacher gives out his stolen candy to the now-caring students, regaining real his form “just in time for a Halloween treat.”
Eric Rohmann’s Bone Dog (Roaring Brook, ages 4-8) begins by describing the loving relationship of Gus and his elder dog, Ella,who promises him under a full moon “no matter what happens, I’ll always be with you” and “a promise made under a fool moon can not be broken.” On Halloween night, a skeleton-costumed Gus is surrounded by real skeletons who tell him “you’ve got guts kid... but not for long.” Under the shimmering moon, Ella, now a bone dog, joins Gus to defeat them. The book ends with a lovely wordless sequence as boy and dog rest together under the full moon before bone-toting dogs follow Gus home.