Neitzel’s story jumps out of the starting block. A girl gathers pieces of this and that to fashion a Halloween costume. As she pulls the elements together, so accumulate lines in rhyme and an evolution of rebuses in the classic format of the series. The rhyme sets have some juice and the rebuses—as rebuses will—keep the reader’s focus. But once the pieces are assembled, the rebuses are dropped and the jouncy story moves into turtle-gear. The girl must decide who she wants to be for Halloween from the available materials—and there is plenty to choose from—but she devises only two alternatives, though eight would have kept the pace of the first 16 pages. This is where Parker’s artwork, a mixture of watercolor, pen and colored pencil, saves it. Each of her latter illustrations is a purely described set piece with lots of detail to pore over. Collaboration, then, comes to the rescue. (Picture book. 3-6)
