A curious cow and a flock of nervous chickens make quite different Halloween company. Both appear in Sandra Boynton's books, and both give you something more useful to choose by than a vague promise that a story is “not scary.” What happens on the page, and how you want to read it, matter more.
Follow one mystery or a whole flock
In Boo! Baa, La La La!, a cow hears a mysterious reply to her call and goes looking for its source. There's one curious character to follow and a sound to wonder about together.
Eek! Halloween! follows chickens who are unsettled by the unusual sights around them, until they discover the occasion behind it all. The busier cast and changing sights give the adult a different reading job. Which sounds more like a book you'd enjoy sharing?
You get to choose the reading voice
Halloween can bring out our most theatrical voices, but you can read these stories quite ordinarily. Pause on an animal, wonder aloud about what it has noticed, or let the pictures carry the joke. If you have the book already, read it through yourself before sharing it with a listener whose preferences you know.
Some readers will care about the costumes and surprises. Others may be there for the cow. A gentle reading comes from paying attention to that particular person, rather than treating a book's description as a guarantee of how they'll feel.
A story can have its own place in the season
Put a Halloween book somewhere it can be picked up before an outing or read again afterward. We like the idea of the story having a quieter life alongside the celebration, when everyone is back in ordinary clothes and there's still something funny to look at.
If dressing up is part of your plans, a red dragon costume or ladybug wings offers a separate kind of play. Choose for the wearer's size and the specific product's age guidance. Our costume buying guide explains the difference between a full outfit and an accessory, including why the selected variant matters.
For the reading shelf, one seasonal title alongside an everyday animal story gives you somewhere else to go when Halloween passes. Browse the Sandra Boynton collection for that companion. And if a pair of wings becomes a favorite, our year-round dress-up guide considers where costumes can go once October is over.
Leave a comment