Scary, Scary Halloween Written by Eve Bunting, Illustrated by Jan Brett

Scary, Scary Halloween is told in a rhyming scheme and is about the creatures that one can see on Halloween. It is told from the perspective of cats who are hiding from these “creatures” (children dressed up from Halloween).  This book would be useful to discuss Halloween costumes as a group and to discuss the types of things people do during the holiday, such as trick or treat. This would also be a good book to discuss differences between make-believe and reality by drawing students’ attention to the fact that all the creatures in this book are really children dressed in costumes.

Target age: Preschool and Kindergarten. Though the text content is short enough for toddler-aged children, the illustrations are so life-like, I would be concerned about inadvertently scaring really young readers. Of course, every class has a different make-up of students so it really depends on the temperaments and development of the children.

Spring board for ideas: The illustrations are wonderful in this book and only allude to that the voice of the story are a bunch of cats. Students can be asked to make predictions about whose eyes are hiding under the stairs.

Additionally, the cats leave the hiding place under the house and start to roam the streets. As a writing or drawing prompt, students could be asked what they think the cats might have done next.

The word choices in this book are also vocabulary building for younger students (words like sunken, drifting, glimmer, etc.). The rhyming patterns within the text could also be utilized for a rhyming extension.