REVIEW: The 13 Days of Halloween

Imagine—celebrating thirteen days of Halloween instead of just one…As of this writing, there are precisely thirteen days remaining until All Hallows Eve, making this the perfect day to review The 13 Days of Halloween By Carol Greene, Illustrated by Tim Raglin

In this revision of the Christmas standard, The Twelve Days of Christmas, a charming ghoul showers his  gracious  “good friend”  with gifts of spooky, slimy,  and creepy creatures big and small: five cooked worms, four giggling ghosts, three fat toads, two hissing cats…and a vulture in a dead tree.

  On the thirteenth day, the ghoulish gal offers her suitor a box complete with bow, and herein lies the real magic in this book—you and your readers are prompted to guess just what she could have possibly given to him. My dad would have called this a cliffhanger. I call it an opportunity to exercise the creative muscles.

 This whimsically illustrated book is suggested for ages 4-8, but I handed it to my 11-year-old and asked him to read it and to share his thoughts. Without prompting, he sang his way through the pages—I suppose it can’t be helped; the Christmas song is firmly entrenched in the memory reels.

 He reached the last page—the cliffhanger—and sat there stumped. “I wonder what she would have given him. Can you guess?”  We spent quite a bit of time running through the possibilities—what had he not given her? “A pumpkin, no a jack-o-lantern! No something more scary…look at his face; he’s almost fearful! A zombie! A bloody hand! A brain! A beating heart.”  We decided upon the latter, reasoning that the suitor had, in fact, won the woman’s heart with all of his attention.

This has been added to our Halloween reading box, and will be a part of our holiday traditions.