Developing a love of Halloween starts early. Encourage your littles from the beginning! Read Halloween!
Brooms Are for Flying!, by Michael Rex, (July 2020, Henry Holt), $7.99, ISBN: 9781250241481
Ages 0-3
Michael Rex has been an essential part of my Halloween storytimes for years. Goodnight Goon and The Runaway Mummy get regular rotation and my kiddos love the familiar spin on beloved bedtime stories. His 2009 book, Brooms Are For Flying!, is now available in board book for your littles to gnaw on (but not if they’re library books, please!) and wander through again and again. If kids love Goodnight Goon and The Runaway Mummy are because they love the similarities to Margaret Wise Brown’s Goodnight Moon and The Runaway Bunny, then Brooms Are For Flying! will appeal to kids who love Sandra Boynton’s Barnyard Dance!: a young witch leads a group of her fiendish friends through a spookytime dance that gives every part of the body a workout: “Legs are for marching/ Feet are for stomping. Eyes are for peeking. / Arms are for reaching.” Get your little ones up and stomping, shambling, and dancing like their favorite ghouls and ghosts! Perfection for Halloween readalouds and for any old time, really.
Spooky Pants, by Roger Priddy, (July 2020, Priddy Books), $9.99, ISBN: 9780312530211
Ages 0-3
Part of Priddy Books’s Turn the Wheel series, Spooky Pants gives kids a treat – lots of laughs! – as they scroll through various tops and bottoms to match 8 costumed friends with their missing pieces. Give Billie Bones a Jack-o-Lantern head, or Hound the Werewolf a groovy disco pair of pants and platform shoes. Little prompts on each page offer a seek-and-find for little pointer fingers, as they are prompted to search for other items in each picture: magic wands and fizzing potions, jingly-jangly chains and fancy collars. A fun page at the end lets kids see all the different possibilities, and choose their favorites. Study cardboard pages and wheels hold up to lots of use by exploring hands! Priddy Books are great to have for little explorers – I’ve had some in my own home collection since the third grader was wee.
Check Priddy Books’s free downloads page to get activity sheets, picture puzzles, and more.
Mom Read It 