“There once was a man named Jack who was stingy and mean.” When he meets a sinister, “too friendly” man, the miser is happy to accept a free dinner, promising to pay his debt on the day he dies. Years later, on Halloween, he steals a couple pumpkins with an eye toward soup. Predictably, his creditor shows up just as he is cutting his pumpkin open, and he avoids death by catching the coal the Devil flings at him in his hollowed-out pumpkin. Tegen retells this Irish folktale straightforwardly, bringing the legend into the present day: “On Halloween...we light a Jack O’Lantern to remember what happened to Jack.” Dorman provides equally prosaic illustrations, picturing Jack with a long nose and perpetual frown and the Devil with slicked-back hair and mustache. Useful, if not particularly memorable. It doesn't hold a candle, though, to Wicked Jack, by Connie Nordhielm Wooldridge and illustrated by Will Hillenbrand (1995). (author’s note) (Picture book/folktale. 4-8)
