Review: The 13 Days of Halloween

Summary: "On the first day of Halloween my good friend gave to me: a vulture in a dead tree."

Children will love to sing along!

Everyone knows "The Twelve Days of Christmas," but are you ready for The Thirteen Days of Halloween? In this delightfully offbeat story, a dashing ghoul tries to win his ghostly love's heart with heaps of hilarious gifts ranging from broomsticks and bats to cauldrons and cats! Carol Greene's lively verse is perfectly complemented by Tim Raglin's enchantingly erie illustrations. Children of all ages will love to sing along. The result is a frightfully funny Halloween tale you'll never forget. -- Sourcebooks Jabberwocky

I am so happy to be wrapping up the tour for THE 13 DAYS OF HALLOWEEN by Carol Greene and illustrated by Tim Raglin. What better day to blog about a Halloween book than October 31st? (Unfortunately, Halloween is pretty much over for us since we trick-or-treated on Thursday night and had our school parties on Friday.)

I'm sure you've seen THE 13 DAYS OF HALLOWEEN somewhere in the book blogosphere the past couple of weeks (you couldn't have missed it), but I promise you this book is worthy of all the hype surrounding it. Booking Son and I absolutely loved this adorable sing-along storybook! It has catchy prose, especially if you sing it to The 12 Days of Christmas tune. And the pictures are entertaining in their own right.

All preschoolers seem to love learning by repetition, and THE 13 DAYS OF HALLOWEEN definitely has a lot of repetition! Think The 12 Days of Christmas with Halloween terms such as giggling ghosts, cooked worms and spiders creeping. It probably goes without saying that Booking Son loved all the ghastly terms and gross words! And I have to say that I thoroughly enjoyed reading/singing the book to Booking Son, and he loved listening to it. About half way through the story, he even started piping in with the last few lines of the "song." It definitely got us in the Halloween spirit!

Tim Raglin's illustrations in the book are just perfect! Of course, they help tell the story of a ghoul who is trying to win his love's heart, but they are just so much fun to look at. I have actually gone back through this book many times just to look more closely at the pictures. There is a lot to look at on every page for little ones, and the various characters are hilarious (especially their facial expressions.)

One thing that I really liked about this book (and didn't even realize it when I read it the first time) is that THE 13 DAYS OF HALLOWEEN is actually educational! My son loved to countdown with the story/song, and he especially enjoyed looking for and counting the characters on each page! This book kept him entertained long after we finished reading it together!

Thanks to Sourcebooks for sending me a copy of THE 13 DAYS OF HALLOWEEN.