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HALLOWEEN NIGHT by Arden Bruce

HALLOWEEN NIGHT

by Arden Bruce & illustrated by David T. Wenzel

Pub Date: July 1st, 2001
ISBN: 0-87358-797-9
Publisher: Rising Moon

The usual Halloween suspects come out in mildly menacing guises to participate in this simple, rhymed sequence of questions and answers—basically “Who can? I can.” In Wenzel’s misty watercolors, a witch swoops over moonlit stands of gnarled, leafless trees toward a ramshackle haunted mansion, bats flutter amidst rustling cornstalks, an owl hoots, a skeleton clambers over tumbled gravestones, but “All in their costumes, / ready for fun, / who can frighten / every one?” “WE CAN,” responds a porchful of trick-or-treaters, grimacing and wriggling stubby fingers. Though there are no escorting adults in sight, the conventional, decidedly un-mysterious imagery captures the modern tameness of this ancient holiday, and is likely to induce more smiles than shivers in younger children. (Picture book. 4-6)