A TEENY TINY HALLOWEEN

A new “teeny tiny woman” tale joins the Halloween shelf.

Nestled in a teeny tiny house in a big forest lives a teeny tiny woman. (You get the point—for youngsters learning to tell a tale aloud, the repetition—and the changing font that indicates volume—is valuable, but adults may need a teeny tiny bit more time to throw themselves into the fun.) Every fall the diminutive woman has a problem: the autumn leaves bury her cottage. She cries out, “Oh, who will save me?” but though each time she cries a little louder than the last, it’s still not enough to attract attention. Tapping the windows and banging pots and pans also fails. Her last idea is one that will seem odd: baking cookies. But who can ignore that delicious aroma? Not the children dressed as a cat, a witch, and a ghost who are walking through the forest. The three friends dig through the leaves to uncover the source. One “trick-or-treat!” later, they are enjoying gooey cookies at the table together. While the woman’s solution is a clever one, it will also likely have parents reminding their children not to enter people’s houses on Halloween. Cole’s illustrations are full of the colors of the season. The woman, the boy ghost, and the girl witch are white; the girl cat—an orange tabby—is black. In a nice change from more traditional “teeny tiny woman” tales, this book’s protagonist is no crone but a fashionably dressed woman of indeterminate age.

Rates high in creative problem-solving and oral storytelling but low in Halloween safety.