Sure, it’s TEEN Read Week, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t also use this time to promote great books and reading to children who are going to be teens eventually. If your child or tween wants to find some engaging reading material for the Halloween season, but they’re not quite ready to venture into the “young adult” section of your local library yet, Betty Carter – one of Books & Authors subject matter experts and a former Newbery Committee member – offers these suggestions.
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October Treats: Halloween Suggestions for Young Readers, by Betty Carter
Ghosts In the House!
When Halloween approaches, children’s demand for monsters reaches an almost fever pitch as they start asking for books about ghosts and goblins and things that go bump in the night. Still, very young children don’t want to be all that scared; they just want to have some slight connection with the macabre. The concept that characters (and, by association, young readers and listeners) can control the monsters around them is most appealing and part of the draw of Kazuno Kohara’s Ghosts In the House! Seasonally set in bright orange and black, this small story tells of a young girl dressed as a witch (or maybe she is a witch – a good question for young listeners) who moves into an old house. Unfortunately, the house is already occupied by ghosts — not scary ghosts, but, after a turn in the washing machine, gossamer ghosts who look like pieces of Kleenex floating around. So what does our heroine do? With dispatch, she finds a use for each, as a tablecloth, a curtain, and even a blanket, quickly turning her house into a well furnished home.
Jeremy, in Jeremy Draws a Monster by Peter McCarty, demonstrates the ultimate control: not only does he create his own monster (by drawing it) but he also sends it (this monster is much too demanding and whiney for anyone to live with) on its way by drawing a bus, a ticket, and a suitcase. But perhaps Jeremy’s monster is fear; he’s lonely when he takes out his fancy pen and starts to draw, but when he makes the monster disappear, he’s confident enough to go outside and play with the other children he’s just observed from afar.
The House that Drac Built
Cloaking a monster or two with a familiar story pattern also lessens children’s fear factors. Judy Sierra’s The House that Drac Built has all kinds of monsters, from mummies to fiends, but they appear within the structure of “The House that Jack Built.” (“This is the monster whose bloodcurdling roar/startled the fearsome manticore/that wrestled the werewolf/that chased the cat/that bit the bat/that lived in the house that Drac built.”) What can be so scary about a nursery rhyme, particularly one that’s read aloud with lots of opportunities for young listeners to chime in and ends with a host of trick or treaters playing with all these creatures on Halloween night? (Highlighting another holiday with monsters and within a familiar story pattern, is ‘Twas the Fright Before Christmas, again by Judy Sierra and also brilliantly illustrated by Will Hildenbrand.)
Monsters don’t have to be scary; they can also be playful. Let beginning readers meet Annie, from The Monster in the Backpack. “Annie’s new backpack came with pink and blue flowers. Annie’s new backpack came with a zipper. Annie’s new backpack came with a monster.” And that monster is as irritating as Jeremy’s, but Annie can’t draw it out of her life. She’s got to learn to accept it, and, of course she does, making a new friend in the process. And, in the monsters-as-humorous-figures category, don’t forget Skeleton Hiccups by Margery Cuyler. S. D. Schindler adds his own artistic hilarity to the problem of a skeleton trying to cure the hiccups. Water dribbles through its bones to the floor, eating sugar causes all kinds of problems, and just imagine what happens when skeleton tries to hold its breath.
Not to be forgotten are monsters from outer space. Space Case, by Edward Marshall and cleverly illustrated by James Marshall, lands just in time for Halloween. And for this discus shaped creature, Halloween is about the best time it’s had in light years. But then comes school, where the thing from outer space far outpaces all the other students. “School was fun,” beeped the thing. “But I wouldn’t want to do it every day.” Hearing the hard truth about life on earth, our little alien prepares to leave – and then it learns about Christmas. “Why that’s only two zyglots away,” beeped the thing. “I think I’ll come back for that!”
Alien Feast
Middle grade readers can also have their fill of aliens, although they certainly won’t find any endearing ones in Michael Simmons’s Alien Feast. These are flesh-eaters, with an unexplained aversion to feet, appendages they leave all around the countryside as they chomp through the known population of our planet. In pure escapist fiction, young William Aitkin, his Uncle Maynard, and classmate Sophie Astronovitch, try and destroy the aliens. Their efforts are met with resistance from both the visitors and indigenous Earthlings itching for all kinds of slimy deals. This is a roller coaster ride of adventure with scrapes, escapes, and near misses that promises – and delivers – action with every page turn.
Some monsters are the products of humankind gone awry. Z. Rex (by Steve Cole) is a living, thinking dinosaur in this Jurassic Park-lite for middle grade readers. Adam Adair’s father, a gifted scientist who develops gaming materials, is missing, and all Adam knows is that someone is out to kill him. But when that someone is combined with a “monster . . . as big as a bus . . . with a thick, snaking tail, a ridged back, and a huge reptilian head,” Adam realizes he’s in deep trouble. Finding his dad, and the secret to Z. Rex, sets the stage (and the carnage) for this projected series: The Hunting.
A skeleton with a little more meat on its literary bones than the hiccupping one created by Cuyler and Schindler is Skulduggery Pleasant (by Derek Landy). When Sophie’s uncle dies, she discovers she is his primary heir, but that gift is fraught with danger. Only her uncle’s good friend, a detective who has no flesh, skin, eyes, or face, and sports just a skull for a head, is to be trusted. Together, Sophie and Skulduggery hunt down the “Faceless Ones” in a series of adventure/mysteries with plenty of wordplay and diverse jobs for these two working stiffs.
Remember, though, this is Halloween, and there’s nothing like a good ghost story. Mary Dowling Hahn’s 1986 Wait ‘Till Helen Comes still scares the pants off fourth and fifth graders alike. One of her more recent releases, All the Lovely Bad Ones, finds Travis and Corey staying with their grandmother at a newly renovated Vermont inn. Yes, it’s haunted, and at first those hauntings seem to be the work of mere poltergeists. But, as the story unfolds, readers discover a whole host of ghosts, kids like themselves who want only revenge for their mistreatment in the inn’s former life as an orphanage. The mistress of the mansion still haunts in all her spectral glory, and Travis and Corey must right her wrongs before the young ghosts can finally rest.
The good news for adults trying to satisfy children’s appetite for ghouls and ghosts is that many more fine volumes stand ready for reading; happily the list goes on and on. Beginning chapter book readers, for example, have multiple treats in store for them with Chris Mould’s Something Wickedly Weird Series, three volumes that chronicle the determined adventures of Stanley Buggles trying to determine the secrets behind his uncle’s mysterious town of Crampton Rock. Slightly older youngsters may want to go back in time for a few thrills and chills with Barnaby Grimes (by Paul Stewart and Chris Riddell) a messenger, otherwise known as a tick tock, who uncovers all sorts of gruesome characters in his two volume series that takes him around Victorian London. And how about a little humor? The first book in a series, Dying to Meet You: 43 Old Cemetery Road by Kate Klise, is an epistolary novel with letters flying back and forth from dried up children’s author I. B. Grumpley; Paige Turner, his editor; Anita Sale, his real estate agent; and Seymour Hope, a young boy who unexpectedly turns up residing in Grumpley’s new rental property. Who knows? Perhaps a child or two will come home early on Halloween night for the best treat of all – reading.
- Betty Carter is a former New Orleans, Louisiana reading teacher; Houston, Texas school librarian; and Texas Woman’s University professor of children’s and young adult literature. She’s been a member of the Newbery Committee, which annually selects the most distinguished book in children’s literature and the Sibert Committee which annually selects the most outstanding informational book in children’s literature. She’s also been a juror and chair of the Boston Globe-Horn Book Award and is a past coordinator of the Texas Bluebonnet Committee which oversees the selection and use of an annual reading list of books read by over two-hundred thousand school children in Texas. She presently works as a reviewer for The Horn Book Magazine.
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