Rejoice, Halloween people! There's a 2015 edition of Ray Bradbury's 1972 classic The Halloween Tree (Knopf), one of the very best Halloween books ever written for eight-year-olds or adults, newly illustrated by the much-admired Gris Grimly. Gather the kids around on an October night and read (out loud, if possible) the deliciously lyrical, globe-circling, time-traveling tale of Mr. Moundshroud and eight trick-or-treating boys in search of their missing, maybe stolen friend Pipkin... "And all the deep dark wild long history of Halloween waiting to swallow us whole!"
It's easy to creep out toddlers, so Leslie Patricelli gently eases them into Halloween with the endearing board book Boo! (Candlewick). Here, a tiny trick-or-treating ghost gradually works up to ringing the doorbell solo. As it should be, the pressing questions of the day are "How should we carve our jack-o'-lantern?" and "What should I be?"
2015 brought a fine harvest of Halloween picture books, including The Fun Book of Scary Stuff by Emily Jenkins, illustrated by Hyewon Yum (Frances Foster/FSG) in which a boy makes a list of everything that frightens him (monsters, ghosts, witches, trolls) and in a funny cartoon-bubble dialogue with his dog, they determine none of them is all that scary. (On witches: "Aren't you afraid of them?" asks the boy. "Not if they've got food," says the dog.) Don't miss the winsome Leo: A Ghost Story by Mac Barnett, illustrated by Christian Robinson (Chronicle) or the rhyming Scarecrow Magic by Ed Masessa, illustrated by Matt Myers (Orchard/Scholastic).
Teen readers have tricky treats in store with British artist Andi Watson's graphic novel Princess Decomposia and Count Spatula (First Second/Macmillan) and Irish author Moïra Fowley-Doyle's The Accident Season (Kathy Dawson/Penguin), a hypnotic, poetic novel about a family's dark secrets that have them on edge, particularly in October. --Karin Snelson, Halloween person, children's editor, Shelf Awareness
