Here’s an ode to cute illustrated books of Halloween. These are the kid-friendly books that are heavy on illustrations. The book’s pages are glossy and the cover has embossed characters, letters, or both. These features help drive home the book’s movement and tactile enjoyment for young hands. It’s those ages who get more out of touching than they do sitting. It’s Almost Time for Halloween! is the silly sort of seasonal selection that exists to make kids fall in love with the idea of reading a book.
It’s Almost Time for Halloween! follows a young girl in early elementary school through her town. This is a lovely town that Hallmark could easily film every seasonal film there for multiple years. She goes to the pumpkin patch where she sees all sorts of people, including her teddy bear who sees a bearded jolly-old man who seems out of place. She merrily carves a pumpkin and makes cookies with the extract.
She and her friends pick out their costumes. They get some candy and proceed to open the door to a big party. A party is out there, but it’s not the one that she’s been preparing for. It’s a Christmas parade with kids dressed as gingerbread cookies, shining stars, drummer boys and pumpkins forming snowmen. Careful readers will look back and realize that the girl’s teddy bear has been sprinkling in Christmas elements, as she’s been planning Halloween.
The girl corrects her bear and recaps all of the seasonally appropriate things she’s done to prepare for October 31. It’s Almost Time for Halloween! is the silly kind of fun that early-elementary kids will howl at. They confused Christmas with Halloween?! The teddy bear was enthusiastically leading a parade with elves? There’s a spider with a Santa hat on? For children of a certain young demographic, for a period of time, this will be the funniest thing that they’ve seen.
This is the book that pre-k through second graders will read, or have read to them, when they’re pumped with energy, but they need to sit down. The brief rhyming stanzas are peaceful and allow for enthusiastic readers to really have fun with them. Its illustrations are bright and each page has movement or minute details that curious minds can explore. The holiday ‘twist’ also opens up the possibility to other celebrations that run into one another. What if Cupid met, or tried to shoot Baby New Year with a love arrow? What if a turkey got mixed up and went to the North Pole? The cross pollination of the holidays, if done in the same vein as It’s Almost Time for Halloween!, would yield young kid giddiness at the elementary school water cooler.
It’s Almost Time for Halloween! is by Maisha Oso with illustrations by Tom Knight and is available on Margaret K. McElderry Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster.
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