Some kids love Christmas. Some love Easter. Mine, she L-O-V-E-S Halloween. I love the wawawahhhhhhhh coming from her when describing vampires and ghouls. But, really when you ask the tiny person what kind of stories she wants to read right now, the terms mildly spooky, a little mysterious and a lot funny are on the list.
That list is, in reality, not a very easy one to check all the boxes on when it comes to Halloween books for the 4 to 8-year-old crowd. There was a whole lot of library cruising, multiple trips to the book store, some online cruising, finally heading back to the book store to score the winners of the mildly spooky, funny, scary Halloween books for 2009.
Our favorite one this year has got to be Monster Museum by Marilyn Singer, illustrated by Gris Grimly. This lyrical book of hilariously illustrated monsters of all kinds is all about the fun that is discovering their mildly spooky stories. It’s sort of like a fun encyclopedia of spookiness, but without any seriousness at all. Then, just when you think that it has gotten really scary, all of the monsters make friends and you find out that monsters need friends too.
Awwwwwww.
This book was a good price point (under $10) and the kiddo keeps it with her everywhere she goes just to make sure her monster friends are okay. Plus, she’s on the hunt for man-eating plants, because she wants to talk to them about why they would want to eat humans (that’s so mean, she said. No one is going to want to hang out with them).
On a much more tame note, one of our spooky faves this season is most definitely A Very Scary Witch Story by Joanne Barkan, illustrated by Jody Wheeler.
Always working on being the big girl, our daughter could completely relate to being left behind by some of the older kids, like the young witch in this tale.
Her sisters take off for the witches ball and leave her to figure out a freaky broom that seems to be completely out of control. Her night flight takes them on a bit of a spooky adventure, ending right at the witches ball.
It turns out that the seemingly mean sisters were hoping the young witch would make the journey so that everyone would know that she was an awesome witch too.
This is such a cute, Halloween-themed bit of coming of age tale for girls. We love it, tell extended stories about it and read it when we need to believe brooms can fly.
While these books were very different, my Halloween lover has decided that packing them both (and a few others like Scary, Scary Halloween by Eve Bunting) is a requirement because EVERYONE has to know what Man-Eating Plants look like and should meet her friend the witch.
Surely these are two to add to the long term collection of spooky holiday goodness for years to come.
You can pick up both of these at your local independent book seller.
Covers courtesy of Simon & Schuster and Scholastic Canada
This is Not An Advertisement
Here at Our Big Earth we have a strict policy about how we handle book reviews. We only review books we've enjoyed and, while publishers do send us books free of charge we always give away that copy of the book when it is reviewed. If a book is not reviewed, it is returned to the publisher. When publishers specifically request that we not return un-reviewed books, we use them as giveaways at community events. If a book is reviewed, a publisher, author or advertiser has no editorial control over the review. They see the review for the first time when you do.
Advertisers, publishers and authors cannot pay to have their books reviewed and you'll never see a link, product or business mention in a post that has been purchased by that business.
These sounds fun!
Thanks for the book suggestions. They both sound like a lot of fun, and they are books I am not familiar with, so I am glad to look forward to reading these with my kids.