Review_CHILDREN’S104 PUBLISHERS WEEKLY ■ SEPTEMBER 2, 2019
Review_CHILDREN’S Review_CHILDREN’Son a field trip to a museum, Vlad impresses
the entire school by combining spookiness
with skateboarding, zooming down a
dinosaur skeleton and terrifying the other
patrons. The single-note antagonism wears
a tad thin throughout, but outré pictures
of Vlad’s classmates and over-the-top
facial expressions should elicit chuckles.
Ages 3–7. (July)Happy Halloween, Pirates!
W. Harry Kirn, illus. by Inna Chernyak. Clever,
$12.99 (18p) ISBN 978-1-948418-88-1
In this lift-the-flap book written in
uneven verse, some friendly-faced pirates
accept an invitation from a town’s children
to come ashore for a Halloween bash. The
captain, first mate, and cook plan their
disguises (a ghost, a superhero, and a lob-
ster, respectively) and make their way to
the creaky front door of a purple haunted
house, where they are welcomed inside for
“apple cider, cakes, and marshmallows/ all
laid out to share.” And before the celebra-
tion winds down, the landlubber party
hosts reveal a swashbuckling costume of
their own. Sturdy flaps offer a variety of
revelations, including cause-and-effect
moments, but many background characters
appear inconsistently, and the sunny illus-
trations fail to buoy this lackluster tale of
land and sea. Ages 3–up. (Aug.)ABCs at the Haunted House
Jennifer Marino Walters, illus. by Nathan Y.
Jarvis. Red Chair, $17.99 (32p) ISBN 978-1-
63440-876-9
Holiday imagery and a few surprises
await readers as they follow two children
on a tour of the Halloween Haunted
House, identifying letters and objects
along the way. Walters highlights each
letter of the alphabet into an account of
what the kids discover roaming the
home’s rooms and grounds. A small panel
depicting the letters showcased in a
spread appears on its right-hand-page,
and the words beginning with those letters
boldfaced appear at left in lines of text
(the spread for V and W reads “Make way
for Vampire and the Witch!”). The flat
digital art adds little but festive images to
this uneven abecedarian; despite
humorous details and a cast of friendly
monsters, the uneasy marriage of concepts
isn’t quite successful. Ages 4–7. (Sept.)animation, choreographs the young witches’
aerodynamic antics and amps up the visual
drama with a Halloween palette. Alert
readers may notice that Betty actually has a
shy, bespectacled fan among the meanie
witches, but the creators forgo developing
any alliance in favor of a familiar portrayal of
determined, lone underdog who discovers
her sense of worth. Ages 3–7. (July)Pick a Pumpkin
Patricia Toht, illus. by Jarvis. Candlewick,
$16.99 (40p) ISBN 978-1-5362-0764-4
In a sequel to their Christmas-themed
Pick a Pine Tree, Toht and Jarvis follow a
family and their circle of pals as they
transform some humble pumpkin-patch
residents into the ultimate symbol of
Halloween: the jack-o’-lantern. As in
the previous book, the rhymes are lively
and lilting, even featuring some of the
same cues (“But, wait!”) that push
readers to the next spread. The pacing,
leisurely but never slack, savors each
stage of the pumpkins’ journey to spooky
fabulousness, including the a wagon ride
and the removal of “Clumpy seeds. Guts
and things.” Jarvis’s bustling, chalk-
textured pictures evoke the spirit of
homespun fun, while the deep color pal-
ette—punctuated by radiant orange, of
course (“Its red-hot eyes/ will gaze/ and
flicker;/ Its fiery grin/ will blaze and
snicker”)—feels like a favorite fall
flannel. Ages 3–7. (July)Vlad the Rad
Brigette Barrager. Random House, $17.99
(40p) ISBN 978-0-553-51345-5
A skateboarding-obsessed vampire’s
lack of interest in all things frightening
irritates his headmistress in this tale by
the illustrator of the Uni the Unicorn
books. “Why can’t you be more like your
classmates and eerily float to class? Or
ooze down the hallway quietly?” the
founder of Miss Fussbucket’s School for
Aspiring Spooks asks as Vlad skates
through a throng of students (two demons,
a cyclops, and a black cat among them).
Vlad’s whizzing skateboard earns repeated
reprimands and
casts him as a
“show-off” and
“Bad Vlad”
among his class-
mates. Finally,as the kids’ playground) to forlorn (when
winter keeps the children indoors) to
chagrin (when the parents threaten to
cut it down) to satisfied—if somewhat
skeptical—when the youngsters decorate
it for Halloween and exclaim, “Trick or
tree!” A slight yet diverting holiday
offering. Ages 3–7. (Aug.)Snowmen at Halloween
Caralyn Buehner, illus. by Mark Buehner. Dial,
$17.99 (32p) ISBN 978-0-525-55468-4
A surprise October snowfall brings the
Buehners’ well-known characters out for a
night of Halloween fun. The narrator and
his sister carefully craft a troupe of snow
characters and outfit them in costume,
then, in a now-
familiar setup,
head off to bed as
the boy imagines
just what the
snowmen get up
to while
everyone else is
asleep. Caralyn
Buehner’s
bouncy rhymes chronicle the frosty
friends’ parade into town—warmly lit for
carnival games, a hay-bale maze, and
trick-or-treating—before they leave a cel-
ebratory seasonal message in their melted
wake. Mark Buehner’s oil-and-acrylic
illustrations feature a playful balance
between nighttime shadows and twin-
kling jack-o’-lanterns, and young readers
will enjoy searching for each of the roly-
poly friends (a rabbit, a robot, and a row-
boat among them) on every page. Ages
3–7. (Aug.)The Itty-Bitty Witch
Trisha Speed Shaskan, illus. by Xindi Yan. Two
Lions, $17.99 (32p) ISBN 978-1-5420-4123-2
When Betty Ann Batsworth shows up for
her first day of first grade witch school still
using her “kinder-broom,” her classmates
begin calling her “Itty Bitty,” which, as
Shaskan notes, makes her feel small inside
each time she hears it. Determined to show
her spirit by winning the big broom-riding
race, Betty works hard (“Practice makes
magic,” Shaskan writes) and inadvertently
discovers that embracing her stature—and
the broom that suits her—can offer a winning
advantage. Yan, whose compositions and
characterizations are reminiscent of classic
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