Halloween Board Books and Picture Books to Celebrate Spooky Season

I was not expecting to love this board book as much as I do, but it is so delightfully funny. It’s a sing-along board book to the tune of “On Top of Old Smokey.” When Frankenstein sneezes, Skeleton’s eyeball lands on the linguine, all covered with cheese. The eyeball continues rolling and bouncing away as Frankenstein, Skeleton, and a black cat follow, down an alley and to a graveyard. This board book is absolutely hilarious and has a plastic eyeball for the roving eye.

Janelle is going to be a doctor for Halloween this year, but she’s not sure where she’s going to go trick-or-treating. Usually, her mom drives her out to the suburbs, but this year she has to work, and her dad is working in his convenience store. Her school friends all offer different ideas for where to trick-or-treat, from apartment complexes loaded with candy to a Halloween ball at a recreation center. As she hears everyone’s trick-or-treating stories, she comes up with the perfect Halloween plan. This is a fun Halloween read, especially for city kids, who really do have so many more choices than I did at my rural childhood home!

This is the fourth book in the wonderful onomatopoeia-filled picture book series starring a Black girl who’s got rhythm. And for Halloween, she’s got the spooky spirit, too. Leaves are crunch crunching and the apples are splashing when kids go bobbing. The main character, in her vampire-witch queen costume, is ready for fun at a Halloween party. Like the other three books in the series, this is a wonderful read-aloud, and Morrison’s illustrations are so evocative of fall and Halloween.

These scary poems remind me of Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark in poetry format. There are some genuinely scary poems in this collection, but also silly ones! Coelho explores different types of poems, from limericks of fear to whispers and repeating lines. With each poem, he invites readers to write their own poems using the same techniques, which would make this a wonderful addition to classroom or homeschool libraries, or just plain fun for any kid. Poems depict skeletons in the basement, creepy, hungry spiders, prankster ghosts, melting zombies, and so much more. Coehlo has several similar poetry collections, but kids will love this monstrous one. My daughter decided to write her own spooky poems about black cats after reading it today.