This story was written not only to entertain the kids, but also to challenge their brainpower. All the characters in this book have names with double meanings. Let’s see if you can figure out what they are. For example, Ed Zortails is really heads or tails.
Have you ever moved and had to start over making friends? That lonely, nervous fright is exactly the tale our ghoulish kid host, Chris P. Bacon, shines his light on, shaking us to our very bones. What will be the fate of a new kid one howling Halloween night?
Now normally, Oct 31st is the perfect time of year to match mischief with your pals or feel accepted as you are, even behind costumes …that is, for everyone except new kids in town, like poor little Tess Ding who’s hiding in her room miserably missing her BFFs.
But then a series of doorbell rings change the course of her night!
What adventure awaits Tess when her mom nudges her out of her comfort zone?
Kids and adults will enjoy the message, all the funny punny names, as well as the adorable drawings. And the sweetest goody of all may just lie ahead in the inclusion of a new friend.
My brothers and I grew up as Navy brats so we moved a lot. It was a grand adventure but I can relate to Tess and any children who are the new kids in school.
I bought this book to give as a gift and I also won a signed copy from the author herself! I love collecting Halloween books and still do for nostalgia’s sake. It reminds me of the years my son and daughter climbed into my bed for our “Family Reading” nights. We had our favorites like Clifford and The Berenstain Bears, which to this day my kids swear were the “Berensteen” Bears
Then there was “Goodnight Gorilla” with the animals sneaking into the zookeeper’s house. The drawings of added people peeking out their windows cracked us up! Oddly, a skeleton pop-up book was both creepy and funny, and I introduced Mrs. Pigglewiggle with her unconventional cures for ill-behaved children. For a while, our top go-to became “Mickey’s Haunted House.” After reading it night after night, I began to go rogue, adlibbing the stories to shake things up. That’s when things got even more hilarious! So much for settling them down.
Even through middle school, we still huddled with our favorites. My son would add his school novels, “The Giver,” and “Roll of Thunder, Hear my Cry,” while my daughter especially liked “Geronimo Stilton” tales complete with his cheesy puns, and then a little later, the “Diary of a Wimpy Kid” series. When it became just us, I mixed in “Are you There God, It’s Me, Margaret” and other Judy Blume and Paula Danziger gems as well as a book that fascinated me as a teen (and somehow survived the many moves of my life)–“From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankenweiler.” It’s a story about two kids protesting family injustice by running away to the Metropolitan Museum of Art whereupon they stumble onto a Michelangelo mystery.
Then in the early high school years, my daughter shared her chilling YA novels of Mary Downing Hahn she discovered in 6th grade. One particular, “The Doll in the Garden,” spooked me more than it did her.
Despite our reading fun, neither of my kids turned out to be hungry page-turners, but my son likes to write creatively and over the summer my daughter has rediscovered Downing Hahn and we bought titles in the store she hadn’t yet read.
It had been several years since we had a PJ book party, so when “A Halloween Party,” arrived this October, I half-jokingly signaled to my daughter and we cozied up with this fun find. As an art student, she admired the illustrations and I treasured our tradition. Nice to know our reading routine doesn’t have to get shelved completely.