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HALLOWEEN NIGHT

Name: HALLOWEEN NIGHT
Author: Charles Ghigna
ISBN: 0-7624-1552-5

TWENTY-ONE SPOOKTACULAR POEMS

by Charles Ghigna & illustrated by Adam McCauley ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 1, 2003

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Using a color scheme heavy on orange and black, along with plenty of glaring eyes and eerie silhouettes, McCauley creates the right atmosphere for this uneven gathering of verse. Some entries, such as “The Two-Headed Ghoul” (“It’s getting close, don’t make it mad, / Here it comes—it’s Mom and Dad!”), and a gleeful visit to a “Haunted House,” are crowd-pleasers, but there’s a moralistic streak to sentiments like, “I’d rather be kooky than spooky,” and a poem about the perils of greed titled “Sick or Treat.” Several selections are only tangentially Halloweenish (“I would like a monster pet, / The kind that children never get”), and others seem dropped into the mix haphazardly, such as one ending with “Halloween is on the way!” that would have been better placed at the beginning than midway through. Still, the collection’s perennially popular theme and evocative look should earn it a try, where budgets permit. (Poetry. 7-10)

Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2003

ISBN: 0-7624-1552-5

Page Count: 32

Publisher: Running Press

Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2003

Categories:

CHILDREN'S HOLIDAYS & CELEBRATIONS

- BOOK REVIEW
THE FATHER GOOSE TREASURY OF POETRY
by Charles Ghigna ; illustrated by Sara Brezzi

- BOOK REVIEW
LITTLE HEARTS
by Charles Ghigna ; illustrated by Jacqueline East

- BOOK REVIEW
FETCH, CAT. FETCH!
by Charles Ghigna ; illustrated by Michelle Hazelwood Hyde

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MONSTER MATH

by Anne Miranda & illustrated by Anne Miranda ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 1, 1999

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Miranda’s book counts the monsters gathering at a birthday party, while a simple rhyming text keeps the tally and surveys the action: “Seven starved monsters are licking the dishes./Eight blow out candles and make birthday wishes.” The counting proceeds to ten, then by tens to fifty, then gradually returns to one, which makes the monster’s mother, a purple pin-headed octopus, very happy. The book is surprisingly effective due to Powell’s artwork; the color has texture and density, as if it were poured onto the page, but the real attention-getter is the singularity of every monster attendee. They are highly individual and, therefore, eminently countable. As the numbers start crawling upward, it is both fun and a challenge to try to recognize monsters who have appeared in previous pages, or to attempt to stay focused when counting the swirling or bunched creatures. The story has glints of humor, and in combination with the illustrations is a grand addition to the counting shelf. (Picture book. 3-8)

Pub Date: Aug. 1, 1999

ISBN: 0-15-201835-2

Page Count: 32

Publisher: Harcourt

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1999

Categories:

CHILDREN'S CONCEPTS | CHILDREN'S HOLIDAYS & CELEBRATIONS | CHILDREN'S SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

- BOOK REVIEW
TANGLED
by Anne Miranda ; illustrated by Eric Comstock

- BOOK REVIEW
VROOM, CHUGGA, VROOM-VROOM
by Anne Miranda & illustrated by David Murphy

- BOOK REVIEW
TO MARKET, TO MARKET
by Anne Miranda & illustrated by Janet Stevens

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CHRISTMAS TAPESTRY

by Patricia Polacco & illustrated by Patricia Polacco ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 1, 2002

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This longer Christmas story centers on an embroidered tapestry purchased to hang in a church for the Christmas Eve service. As with many of her works, Polacco (When Lightning Comes in a Jar, p. 665, etc.) sets her story in Michigan, this time in wintry Detroit. Young Jonathan resents his family’s recent move from Tennessee to where his minister father has been reassigned to renovate an old church and revive its congregation. Through a series of Dickensian trials and coincidences, the tapestry is purchased to cover some water damage to a church wall, and an elderly Jewish woman (and Holocaust survivor) whom the family has befriended recognizes the tapestry as the one she made in pre-WWII Germany for her wedding ceremony. In an ending worthy of O. Henry, the repairman who arrives on Christmas Eve to inspect the water damage turns out to be the woman’s long-lost husband (each thought the other had died in the Holocaust), and the devoted couple is reunited. Polacco succeeds as always with her watercolor-and-pencil illustrations in creating unique, expressive characters who seem to have real lives in their snowy city streets, cozy living rooms, and busy church. The gentle, reassuring message, suggested to Jonathan by his kindly father, is that “the universe unfolds as it should,” even when we don’t understand the pattern of the tapestry. (Picture book. 7-10)