🎃10 Spooky Pumpkins written and illustrated by Gris Grimly

10 Spooky Pumpkins

written and illustrated by Gris Grimly

Orchard Books/Scholastic, 2021, 40 pages

It's Halloween and a little girl, dressed in a old, patched clown costume, heads out of her country home for some trick-or-treating. As she walks along, she passes 10 spooky pumpkins sitting on a low wall and looking for a cat, but finding nine cats. These nine black cats sitting are sitting on a fence and are looking for a bat and they find eight. 

Yes, this jolly story is a Halloween counting book and it counts backwards, but just because readers get down to number one, don't think that that is the end of the story. No, indeed and I liked how it ended so much. One of the other things I liked about this book was the nice way movement and time passing were so apparent. As the little girl walks along, unafraid, I might add, she passes different places and as she goes, the day turns to evening and then nighttime.

The watercolor illustrations are kind of goofy, with a somewhat Nightmare Before Christmas vibe. I was afraid the illustrations might be a little too scary for kids, so I did what I always do - I read this book to my young readers. They are just at the age where Halloween is beginning to mean something to them and they have been talking about costumes and trick-or-treating, so they were ready for a Halloween story anyway. We read it a number of times and my young readers loved it. The illustrations were just cartoony enough that they weren't scared and thought they were somewhat funny. Extra bonus - my five-year-olds can now count backwards from 10.

I have a few Halloween stories that are really favorites and 10 Spooky Pumpkins will definitely be part of the Alex Baugh canon of holiday books.

This book is recommended for readers age 4+

This book was borrowed from the NYPL