Review_CHILDREN’SWWW.PUBLISHERSWEEKLY.COM 101An elegant pumpkin throws a Halloween soiree
in Barker’s counting picture book (reviewed on
this page).Picture Books
Halloween
Little Pumpkin’s Halloween
Algy Craig Hall. Boxer, $6.95 (18p) ISBN 978-1-
910716-67-0
Hall’s board book presents cheerful
evidence that Halloween tricks and
treats—and sights and sounds—aren’t just
for big kids. Followed by a black kitten,
Little Pumpkin, a broadly smiling toddler
wearing a soft-shaped pumpkin hat and
toting a tiny goody bag, moves through
“the spooky house” searching for treats.
As the duo explores behind the “swishy,
swooshy curtains,” up the “creaky stairs,”
and under the “squeaky bed,” Little
Franken, Little Bat, and Little Ghost
emerge to join the party. Together, the
toddling trick-or-treaters summon the
courage to find out “what is behind the
spooky-wooky door.” The answer, presented
in a smiling skull bowl, garners a glad
“Hooray, hooray!” from the diverse crew.
Ample white background space on the
sturdy pages keeps the proceedings age-
appropriately bright. Ages up to 4. (Sept.)
Mr. Pumpkin’s Tea Party
Erin Barker. Blue Manatee, $17.99 (32p)
ISBN 978-1-936669-77-6
The characters in this seasonal counting
book are all traditionally spooky sorts—a
spider named Madam Silk, a mummy
called Dr. Cairo, and more—but the scariest
thing they have in store is attending Mr.
Pumpkin’s elegant evening tea party. He
offers “one cake”; Sir Bones, a formally
dressed skeleton, contributes “two jugs of
cider”; a vampire dressed as a flapper
offers “three jars of jelly to share”; and
neighborhood wildlife get in on the act,
too (“four swooping bats/ fly through the
air”). Newcomer Barker’s watercolor and
ink illustrations provide the softest of
Halloween atmospherics: gentle night,
full moon, weeping willow. Formal wear
(Baron Laguna sports a bowtie), tidy tea eti-
quette, and delicious homemade goodies—
Mr. Pumpkin’s berry-topped cake, Lord
Wolfington’s scones—portray this
Halloween celebration as a quiet, stylish
gathering framed by the counting sequence
and the rhyming lines. Just right for fear-
averse Halloween revelers. Ages 3–5. (Sept.)Pumpkin Orange, Pumpkin Round
Rosanna Battigelli, illus. by Tara Anderson.
Pajama, $17.95 (24p) ISBN 978-1-77278-092-5
Cats enjoy all the glories of a human
Halloween in this peek at popular October
traditions. In Anderson’s colored pencil
and acrylic glaze illustrations, a family of
smiling, scarf-wearing felines heads to a
pumpkin patch, where an errant mouse
sends one pumpkin rolling. There, they
select the sizable squashes they’ll cart home
to carve into jack-o’-lanterns (“Pumpkin
drawing/pumpkin trace,/ pumpkin
carving,/ pumpkin face!”). After donning
costumes, the cats go trick-or-treating as
the festive evening continues (“pumpkin
candy, pumpkin scare”) and return home
for their bedtime routine. Battigelli’s
text—a series of rhyming, two-word
phrases each beginning with “pumpkin”—
sometimes results in perplexing phrases
(“Pumpkin partridge/ pumpkin mouse,/
pumpkin wheeling,/ pumpkin house”)
but possesses a jaunty rhythm and a fun-
to-pronounce quality. Ages 3–6. (Oct.)Dem Bones
Holly Weane, illus. by Ivana Forgo. Flowerpot,
$7.99 (20p) ISBN 978-1-4867-1674-6
Weane and Forgo tweak the traditional
spiritual to feature the bones of an elephant,
billy goat, cat, and dog in this board book
rendition. Dusky scenery—showing a
castle, ghosts, and plenty of flitting bats—
spotlights a group of seven cheerful animals
and one human, all wearing white-boned
skeleton costumes. As the tune proceeds(“The TOE bone’s connected to the FOOT
bone”), four of the cartoon figures receive
their own verse (“Now shake them PUPPY
DOG bones!”). Readers may wonder why
a few of the characters, among them a
dinosaur and a bear, don’t earn their own
verses, and the chorus’s repetition wears
thin after multiple reprisals. But the
volume may well encourage readers to
shake their own bodies—and their sillies—
out. Ages 3–6. (Aug.)Giracula
Caroline Watkins, illus. by Mark Tuchman,
created by Cris Qualiana and Keith Basham.
Persnickety, $16.95 (32p) ISBN 978-1-
943978-45-8
When a vampire bat bites a giraffe with
a sweet tooth—after all, his species has “the
longest, the strongest,/ the best necks in
sight” —the results aren’t exactly suave.
The newly dubbed Giracula’s fangs are
adorably petite, his “black, silken cloak” is
clearly designed for someone much shorter,
and flying poses its own inelegant prob-
lems. Most notable, however, is what
Giracula now craves: not blood, like a
classic vampire, but sweets. His obsession
with the town bakery—he can’t resist
breaking in and tearing through its
stock—is resolved when a young pastry
enthusiast becomes his confidante and
personal baker. The ending feels abrupt,
and Watkins’s rhymes lack zip, but
Tuchman draws the gangly protagonist
with a googly eyed energy that should
amuse readers through the numerous
sugar-driven scrapes. Ages 3–7. (Aug.)The Halloween Tree
Susan Montanari, illus. by Teresa Martinez.
Sourcebooks Jabberwocky, $10.99 (32p)
ISBN 978-1-4926-7335-4
On a Christmas tree farm, a curmud-
geonly needleless sapling grumbles that it
dreads being uprooted: “I don’t like lights,
I don’t like decorations, and I don’t like
people.” After a housing development
replaces the farm, the gnarled tree ends up
on a family’s lawn, where neighborhood
kids turn its knotty branches into a pirate
ship, a hideout, a spaceship, and a dragon.
Martinez fills this 8×8 with vivid digital
illustrations suggestive of animated car-
toons, cleverly tweaking the tree’s facial
expressions to morph from grumpy (amid
Christmas tree buyers) to tolerant (servingChildren’s/YA
continued on p. 104