Designing a creative jack-o'-lantern is one sure way to get into the spooky spirit of the holiday. 'Pumpkin' follows three kids who buy a pumpkin, take it home, and carve it into a grinning jack-o'-lantern illuminated by a candle within. The story is enhanced by Marylin Hafner's evocative renderings of Halloween night.

We then read 'The Tricksters', a ballad of three clever kids dressed as a witch, a skeleton, and a ghost, who love Halloween for the opportunities it presents to play minor tricks on others. 'The Skeleton Parade' is next, all clacking, clinking bones as a troupe of skeletons walks out in the open as they cannot do on any other day. The night's unique ambience is part of why trick-or-treating is such fun. The title poem starts us off with a lyrical overview of Halloween's delightfully atmospheric thrills. The childhood excitement of the season is palpable in these thirteen poems (I wonder if that number was chosen deliberately) as we explore the major and mild frights of October 31. After the otherworldly job Arnold Lobel did illustrating Prelutsky's Nightmares: Poems to Trouble Your Sleep, Marylin Hafner had a lot to live up to in It's Halloween, and she performs admirably, stirring the poet's words to compelling visual life. He lives in Seattle, Washington, and spends much of his time presenting poems to children in schools and libraries throughout the United States.No one writes fun poetry quite like Jack Prelutsky, and his holiday collections are among his most enjoyable. In 2006, Prelutsky was named the first Children’s Poet Laureate by the Poetry Foundation. 'I realized poetry was a means of communication, that it could be as exciting or as boring as that person or that experience.'Īfter stints as a truckdriver, photographer, folksinger, and more, he is now the author of more than forty collections of original verse and anthologies of children's poetry, including: Stardines Swim High Across the Sky: and Other Poems (2013) The Swamps of Sleethe: Poems From Beyond the Solar System (2009) Pizza, Pigs, and Poetry: How to Write a Poem (2008) Be Glad Your Nose Is on Your Facey And Other Poems (Greenwillow Books/HarperCollins, 2008) Behold the Bold Umbrellaphant and Other Poems (2006) The Beauty of the Beast: Poems from the Animal Kingdom (2006) The Random House Book of Poetry for Children (1983) Nightmares: Poems to Trouble Your Sleep (1978), and The Queen of Eene (1976). Although he claims to have hated poetry through most of his childhood, he rediscovered poetry later in life, and has devoted many years since to writing fresh, humorous poetry aimed specifically at kids. On September 8, 1940, Jack Prelutsky was born in Brooklyn, and attended Hunter College in New York City.

Nightmares by Jack Prelutsky