Halloween Poems
Grade 3-5-- This latest addition to a popular holiday series is sure to be a hit, combining a dozen-and-a-half short, shivery modern poems with some of the most deliciously ghastly illustrations children will ever see. Harry Behn establishes the spooky mood--"Tonight is the night/When dead leaves fly. . .", and Livingston takes courageous readers past the "jagged-tooth faces" of jack-o'-lanterns, trick-or-treating apes, ghosts and astronauts, a "Tink, plonk, konkle;/Midnight/Wind-chime" skeleton, up to a magic house with "chocolate doorknobs,/And windowpanes striped with mint" and even into a wicked witch's kitchen--"You're in the mood for freaky food?/ You feel your taste buds itchin'. . .?" Two-thirds of the poems appear here for the first time. Disembodied mouths, mad, disfigured faces, and leering pumpkin heads loom from the misty background in Gammell's weedy, black-and-white illustrations. Even such innocuous activities as "Bobbing for (blub blub) for apples" take on a sinister air--if readers make the mistake of looking too closely at the "apples." Challenge hardened young horror-movie fans with this one. --John Peters, New York Public LibraryCopyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.