Trick-or-Treat: A Happy Hunter's Halloween by Debbie Leppanen (review)

This collection of fifteen original Halloween-themed poems offers a playful variety of rhyming verses that mix longer descriptive pieces in with limericks and lists; the resulting collection is both entertaining and chock-full of crowd appeal. Humor abounds ("Can anybody tell me/ (if anybody knows)/ why skeletons aren't freezing/ when they don't wear any clothes?"), and the fear factor never reaches beyond playfully spooky, making it a great selection for the younger set. Poems from the point of view of ghosts, ghouls, and mummies are intermixed with tales about ordinary humans interacting with creatures of the night, and the varying perspectives add to the entertainment value. Carpenter's high-contrast digital compositions are somewhat flat and slick, but they're amusingly imbued with a retro graphic feel; most spreads are day-glo bright, with a multicultural cast of human/monsterly figures shining out against a dark purple nighttime. The occasional clunky rhyme makes a read-through mandatory before little listeners arrive for storytime, but overall the poems scan smoothly, and they'll be accessible to a crowd. Make sure to allow time for visiting ghosts and goblins to explore the details in the pages before heading out into the night.