Halloween Night - Marjorie Dennis Murray

Illustrator: Brandon Dorman
For: Kids that won't get scared too easily (blurb says 5-9)
Published: 2008
Rating: 5/Loved it
Read: Oct. 3, 2008
Endpapers: Bright orange, front has green ghoul running from bats that carry green gook (rotten eggs), back has fallen ghoul covered with the slimy green-goosh splats of the dropped rotten eggs

This delightful Halloween picture book is written in couplets in the same rhyme and rhythm pattern of "Twas the Night Before Christmas". Delicious words. Boldly illustrated in edge-to-edge purples and greens and oranges (no white - yeah!), the creatures and their Halloween party are a blast - even if you're not a Halloween lover (moi) ! !

Twas Halloween night, and all through the house
Every creature was stirring, including the mouse
The walls were aflutter with little brown bats
While hordes of black spiders crept out of the cracks.

There's a bevy of banshees, witches, zombies, mummies...all preparing a party for trick-or-treaters. Ten arrive, kids dressed as witches and toads and vampires and mummmies, who are totally freaked out when they see:

Mummies and harpies and creepy green things,
Fishtails and stinkbugs, and dragonfly wings;
Newts and toads and lizards and mice,
Flies in the soup and crickets on ice;
A ghost in the parlor and bats in the den,
The witch's pet monster OUTSIDE of its pen,
And Ogre and Olaf and all of their friends!

The kids all run away, but the party-givers become the party-goers and have the "best party ever".

This book could be scary for little kids -- the creepy characters are meant to be! I looked and looked and relooked and reread this book. It was really fun - and I am NOT a Halloween lover, just an old fart.