POOR FARM MEADOW

A group of young trick-or-treaters meet real ghosts in this atmospheric picture book from author/illustrator Centerbar.

Six costumed school friends head out for candy on October 31: “A boat, a lion, a witch, a clown, a Dalmatian, and a tube of toothpaste—our gang—out on this Halloween night.” They go from house to house, collect treats, and decide who will ring each doorbell. Suddenly, they hear a “THUD THUD THUD” growing louder from across a hayfield, then a “CLOP CLOP CLOP.” Creatures lurk, snorting, unseen in the mist beyond the streetlights. Then ghostly horses with caped, ethereal phantom riders rear up, scaring the children out of their wits; the animals gallop across the road and disappear into the woods, and the trick-or-treaters wonder at what they’ve just seen. Centerbar writes in the first-person, present tense, from the kids’ collective perspective. The unrhymed text is presented in a ghostly white typeface, with occasional text-free pages designed to build anticipation and lay the groundwork for the jump-scare. The author’s two-page-spread illustrations offer a truly dark backdrop, mirroring the main characters’ sense of unease and exhibiting the subdued, nighttime colors of scratch art or chalk on a blackboard, which seems apt. The title’s meaning only becomes clear at the end in an informative addendum regarding “poor farm[s]” in Vermont.

A moody, tense, and thrilling Halloween read.