THE WHEELS ON THE BUS AT HALLOWEEN

A Halloween-creature edition of the familiar tune “The Wheels on the Bus.”

On its way around town, the bus picks up a Halloween-themed cast of characters, including ghosts, witches, pumpkins, and even sentient candies. The bus driver is a friendly purple monster. After making the rounds, the bus full of creepy creatures is ready for its “next stop: your house!” The text works equally well as a straight read-aloud or sung to the traditional tune. All of the sounds that the bus riders make are fairly obvious: The ghosts go “Boo! Boo! Boo!” and the bats go “Flap! Flap! Flap!” for example. This makes the book participation-friendly even for a crowd that might be hearing it for the first time. Kieley’s illustrations sync nicely with the text, and the characters are friendly rather than scary, with lots of playful details. Some of the witches (who display a variety of racial presentations) share a cauldron of cider and play cards on their bus ride, and some of the cats sip from little cartons of milk. One fun additional illustration is the title-page map of the bus route, which includes Sea Monster Swamp, the Scratching Post (where the cats are, of course), and Bat Caves. Little readers will surely enjoy poring over these details as they bounce along through the text. (This book was reviewed digitally.)

Exactly as expected, just right for little readers.