Halloween Books

It is always fun to be festive and read books about the seasons.  Here are some of my family's favorite Halloween books that we are reading this year. 

The Charles Addams Mother Goose by Charles Addams

The Charles Addams Mother Goose is a great collection of Mother Goose rhymes.  It includes all of your favorites like Humpty Dumpty, Little Miss Muffet and Hickory Dickory Dock.  What makes this such a great Mother Goose collection is the illustrations.  If your child likes scary then this is the Mother Goose for them.  Addams did not change any of the rhymes, but his illustrations of the rhymes show a darker side.  He uses his familiar drawings of forlorn faces and dark eyes to depict our favorites.  The farmer's wife is solemnly cutting of mice tails with her electric knife, Little Miss Muffet's spider is gigantic and a witch is stirring pease porridge.  What a great Mother Goose collection to have, especially for Halloween time!

Bone Soup by Cambria Evans

I have blogged about the classic folktale Stone Soup but now I have found a spooky fun Halloween version of the tale. In this version of Stone Soup a little skeleton named Finnegan sets off with his eating spoon, eating stool and hungry mouth to find a Halloween feast.  When the town's creatures hear that Finnegan is on his way they all go into hiding and take their food with them.  When Finnegan reaches the town and sees that it is deserted and there is no feast he fills the biggest pot he can find with water and sets it to boil.  You can see in the pictures that the towns creatures are curiously watching Finnegan first from behind closed windows.  Then as he drops an old bone into the boiling water and sings, "Bone soup is what I make. A magic bone is all it takes.  Boil it long and add some spice. Bone soup tastes so very nice" the town's creatures open their windows to watch Finnegan.  Eventually the town's creatures join Finnegan around the pot and help him make bone soup by sharing their stewed eyeballs, bat wings and frog legs.  Just like in the original story of bone soup Finnegan teaches the towns creatures the importance of generosity!

Pumpkin Trouble by Jan Thomas

Halloween doesn't always have to be spooky and scary, sometimes it can be funny! Jan Thomas delights us again with her simple humor in Pumpkin Trouble.  Duck decides to make a jack-o-lantern for Halloween and falls into the pumpkin.  He begins looking around for help. When Mouse and Pig see a pumpkin walking around they think that Duck is a pumpkin monster.  They being to run away from the monster, Duck follows because he is also scared of the pumpkin monster.  When Duck runs into the barn and the pumpkin smashes into pieces, Pig and Mouse declare that Duck battled the pumpkin monster and won.  This book will have your preschoolers laughing out loud for sure!

Room on the Broom by Julia Donaldson

Another Halloween classic. What happens when you take a witch, her boom and several animals?  Well the broom breaks of course.  But that is not even the worst part.  All the animals fall into a icky, mucky swamp, but the witch runs into a dragon who wants to eat her.  The animals come to the rescue of the witch by disguising themselves as a swamp monster with 4 heads.  When the dragon hears the swamp monster say, "Back off that's our witch" he is terrified and runs off leaving the witch unharmed.  Then together the witch and her animal friends brew a potion to make a brand new broom with room for everyone.  As a bonus Amazon Prime has the story animated and it is super cute and fun to watch!

What Was I Scared Of? by Dr. Seuss

Dr. Seuss even gets in the spooky spirit with his book What Was I Scared Of?  In this Seuss story a man goes for a walk and sees a pair of pants, with nothing in them.  Of course he was not scared, not even when the pants started running.  Then the man kept running into the pants different places.  Now the man was scared.  He tried running away and hiding from the pants but again he found them.  He was so scared, but then he realized that the pants were scared also because, "I began to see that I was just as strange to them as they were to me." From that moment on the man and the empty pants were friends, because he knew there was nothing to be scared of.  A fun book to use to teach our little ones who may be scared of some aspects of Halloween.

For some more fun Halloween books check out these posts:

Bunnicula
The Little Old Lady...
Beware
Click, Clack, Boo!
Leonardo the Terrible Monster
Funny Bones

Happy Reading!

Appalachia

Recently I have been doing some work in McCreary County, KY one of the poorest counties not just in the state but in the nation.  McCreary County rests in Southern Kentucky right at the border of Tennessee in the Appalachian Mountains. Having been there and seen the deep, multigenerational, persistent poverty it's still hard to describe to people what it is like.  It is hard to explain why some people can't wait to leave and other's stay for their lifetime.  Appalachia is not just a place it is a way of life.  Whenever I can't find words I always turn to books.

Cynthia Rylant, born and raised in Appalachia has written many books about her growing up in this culture, however none has ever spoke to me the way that Appalachia: The Voices of Sleeping Birds has.  This will now be my go to book for finding the words to tell people about this amazingly beautiful yet very poor part of the country.

Rylant tells us that the people of Appalachia are "more used to tress than sky" and that "mountains came up so close to them and blocked their view" so they just stay where they "know for sure how the sun will come up." She goes on to describe coal mining and how even when people do go off to become something else, they always come back to the mountains.  She describes the houses, inside and out, including the sounds and smells you will encounter in the kitchen.  She tells us how people who live in Appalachia are shy to outsiders but will still be friendly, even more so when they become familiar with you.

"Most of them are thinkers, because these mountains inspire that, but they could never find the words to tell you of these thoughts they have."

This beautiful text paired with the paintings of Barry Moser, also a native of Appalachia make this book a true work of art.  His paintings convey the very emotion of the Appalachian culture and tell more of the story Rylant was writing.

If you have ever been to Appalachia or just want to better understand the culture this book is a must.

Happy Reading!

Laura