7. Deadly Harvest - Heather Graham

There are supposedly three books, each about a different PI brother....This is Flynn Brothers #2

Audio read by Phil Gigante

9 unabridged discs/ 10:28

2008, Brilliance Audio

385 pgs.

Finished 1/28/2014

Adult Murder Mystery

Goodreads Rating: 3.96 (Whaaaaa?)

My Rating:  1/Didn't like it at all -  actually, it was painful .....

TPPL

Setting: Contemporary Salem, Massachusetts

My comments:  Yuck.  I always hate writing a negative review, it makes me feel so badly for the author.  But this book really stunk.  Predictable, repetitious, boring dialogue, stereotypical relationships, characters that could be interchangeable, a head-scratching inclusion of the sort-of-supernatural....and a depiction of the city of contemporary Salem, Massachusetts that is completely misleading.  Top that off with an audio reading that gives the characters crazy southern accents and I'm left cringing.  I can't believe I finished it.  Yuck.  Again.  No more Heather Graham for me.  Just not my cuppa tea.

Goodreads:  When a young woman is found dead in a field, dressed up as a scarecrow with a slashed grin and a broken neck, the residents of Salem, Massachusetts, begin to fear that the infamous Harvest Man is more than just a rumor. But out-of-town cop Jeremy Flynn doesn't have time for ghost stories. He's in town on another investigation, looking for a friend's wife, who mysteriously vanished in a cemetery.  

     Complicating his efforts is local occult expert Rowenna Cavanaugh, who launches her own investigation, convinced that a horror from the past has crept into the present and is seducing women to their deaths. Jeremy uses logic and solid police work. Rowenna depends on intuition. But they both have the same goal: to stop the abductions and locate the missing women before Rowenna herself falls prey to the Harvest Man's dark seduction.

POETRY - Hallowilloween - Calef Brown

(Nefarious Silliness by Calef Brown)
2010, Houghton Mifflin Books for Children
HC $16.99
TPPL 811.54
32 pages
Goodreads rating:  3.82
My rating:  3.5
Endpapers:  Red thick-lined drawings for spooky faces on yellow and orange.
Title page:  A great green spectacled Frankenstein with the title and author across a space that the head has become detached from the body. Completely in color, with the facing page a deep velvety purplish-black.  Cool.
Illustrations:  Colorful acrylics, no white, really fun.

14 poems relating to Halloween (Jack, Lone Star Witches, Hallowilloween, The Oopmachupa Loompacabra, the Vumpire, Cat Battle, Grim Supper, Duncan, Old Napoleon, The Poltergeyser, Not Frankenstein, Scarecrows Epitaph, Mummy Unhappy, The Portrait of Gory Rene - great titles!)

LONE STAR WITCHES

The Witches of Texas
are practicing hexes
in comical conical ten-gallon hats.
They live under bridges
with thousands of bats.
Slobbering bloodhounds
are chasing their cats.

The Witches of Texas,
with cackles and hoots,
are doing a two-step
in lizard-skin boots
while filling a cauldron
with truffles and newts.
A sinister potion
is brewing in Austin
to fire up the feud
with the Witches of Boston.

OLD NAPOLEON

An ancient tree
with one dead branch
standing alone
on a tarantula ranch.
This is the home
and humble haven
of Old Napoleon
the hungry raven
who gorges on spiders
each day at lunchtime.
Munch munch munch.
He calls it "crunch time."

SCARECROW'S EPITAPH

A word of advice
to my replacement,
now standing guard
in the pumpkin patch:

Never scratch an itch
with a kitchen match.

Substitute Creature - Chris Gall

illustrated by the author
Little Brown & Co., 2011
HC $16.99
32 pages
Endpapers:  Full double page illustrations of a street on Halloween - before and after the story. (Look for the changes!)
Title Page:  The doors of the school with monster shadow - full page illustration
Illustrations:  all encased with a border
1st sentence/s:

"On a windswept day in late October, the students of Ms. Jenkin's class arrived to a surprise at school.

"Substitute teacher today! announced Peyton.

Amanda giggled and scribbled on the chalkboard.  Luke performed a circus act.  Gavin laughed like a mad scientist.

Then, at precisely eight o'clock, the door to the classroom creaked open.  The substitute teacher entered the room."

Mr. Creacher (a 5-eyed green monster with tentacles) tells his unruly class the tales of six different students who got into trouble in school and the unhappy results - with a twist at the end!

This has a Halloween aspect, but I wouldn't consider it a Halloween book at all.

Never Say Boo - Robin Pulver

Illustrated by Deb Lucke
Holiday House, 2009
$16.95
32 pages
Rating: 2.5
Endpapers: black with dancing skeletons (there are no skeletons in the story, only human kids and one ghost....)

This book has a silly premise - that ghosts walk around like humans, living in haunted houses and going to school. In this story, Gordon, a ghost, has moved with his parents across town and must now go to a closer school. He is certain that kids will be scared of him because he will be the only ghost at this new school. At his old school, all the kids had been ghosts. And he knew how hard it was to make friends.

The first thing that happens is that his teacher, although she is expecting him, is still so frightened that she passes out. When she comes to she tries to assure all the kids that everything is all right - but the day continues badly for Gordon. All the questions the teacher asks have BOO somewhere in the answer, and he knows that his BOO is really scary, so even though he knows the answers, he doesn't dare contribute. Then at lunch his mom has packed scary surprises in his lunchbox, so the kids are all weirded out. But then something happens that makes him a hero and he instantly becomes everyone's best friend.

Okay. I don't know. Just didn't do it for me, although there are some great words used in the book. And some fun word play.

I also like the illustrations and the endpapers. Lots of black - where white would normally be. Although the story has nothing to do with Halloween (nothing to do with trick-or-treating, witches, pumpkins, etc) this would be the time to share it. So it has it's place as a not-so-scary story about not-scary-at-all ghosts. I guess.

Robin Pulver's website.
It doesn't look like Deb Lucke has her own website, but see some of her artwork here.

The Very Best Pumpkin - Mark Kimball Moulton

Illustrated by Karen Hillard Good
A Paula Wiseman Book, Simon & Schuster, 2010
$12.99 (no dust cover)
32 pages
Rating; 4 (Illustrations are a 5!)

Peter's grandparents grow pumpkins, and people come to pick their own. The grow all over the farm, but one long.....long....................long tendril looping way around behind a rock is growing a tiny pumpkin. Peter lovingly tends it as it grows into a really beautiful speciman.

Next door, Meg has just moved in. She is a reader, quiet and shy, and she watches Peter care for this lovely pumpkin in secret.

It's the pictures I love. They're cute and clever and give a feel-good autumn sense of time and place. There's very, very little white. Lots of greens and browns and oranges. Curlicew black lines. Excellent font. Simple faces. Love it all!

Dear Vampa - Ross Collins

Katherine Tegen Books/Harper Collins, 2009
For: Middle grades
Rating: 4.5
Endpapers: Bright Coral

The story is actually a letter than Bram, a young vampire from Pennsylvania, writes to his grandfather in Transylvania caomplaining about the new next-door nieghbors who love the sunshine, stay up all day long - and shoot them (in their bat-form) out of the sky in the evening!

With very little text and great accompanying illustrations -bright blue/yellow vs. black/red denoting the two families. who live side-by-side, this cute and clever story steers us right toward the end for a delicious twist.

There Was an Old Monster - Ed Emberley

Illustrated by Rebecca Emberley
Music by Adrian Emberley
Listen to the song at Scholastic.com/OldMonster
Orchard/Scholastic, 2009
For: young kids
Endpapers: Red

Cut paper collage on black. This time this New England Father-daughter team add another generation - granddaughter Adrian is a performing songwriter!

Based on - what else - the old lady who swallowed a fly - a monster begins his uncomfortable journey by swallowing a tick that makes him feel sick. He follows that with ants, a lizard, a bat, a jackal, a bear, and then he encounters a lion! Guess what happens next!

Too much fun! And perfect for Halloween.

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.