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so, big lies, I am still reading spoopy kidlit so there will be like. 4 or 5 total batches.
Title: Scary, Scary Halloween
Author: Eve Bunting
Illustrator: Jan Brett
Published: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017 (1986)
Rating: 2 of 5
Page Count: 40
Total Page Count: 333,575
Text Number: 1207
Read Because: on this list of Halloween picture books, hardback borrowed from the Wilsonville Public Library
Review: This is perfectly fine—colorful, detailed art and a strong Halloween vibe; a clever inversion—except for my particular (and admittedly unfair, particularly for books published in in the 80s) issue with narratives thatglorify outdoor cats . It ruins this for me, and it's core to the inversion so I'm not sure how it could be ethically taught to a modern audience.
Title: The Bones of Fred McFee
Author: Eve Bunting
Illustrator: Kurt Cyrus
Published: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2005 (2002)
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 30
Total Page Count: 333,605
Text Number: 1208
Read Because: personal enjoyment, hardback borrowed from the Wilsonville Public Library
Review: This takes a routine piece of Halloween iconography, the safe and even silly plastic skeleton, and renders it slowly, creepingly unnerving. A lot of that is in the art, which has dynamic woodcut-style black lines and copious detail, and frames the skeleton superbly, obscuring the face, vignetting creepy little details. It's not flawless (weaker human/animal figures; the rhyming stumbles) but for a book I picked up on a whim from the Halloween shelf, I'm pleasantly surprised.
This was good but allow me to undermine its spoops: I read it at the library & when I got home to write my review I couldn't quite remember the title. "Skeleton Fred" did not, in fact, turn up results on Goodreads but it did prompt this, from Teja:
( Read more... )
Title: Pick a Pumpkin
Author: Patricia Toht
Illustrator: Jarvis
Published: Candlewick Press, 2019
Rating: 2 of 5
Page Count: 35
Total Page Count: 333,640
Text Number: 1209
Read Because: some or another Halloween picture book list that I can't refind, hardback borrowed from the Wilsonville Public Library
Review: I don't find that instructional/kid's-first picture books age well for an adult reader, so this is all about the art for me. And the art is close to fantastic: when it's pumpkins or dense landscapes it's an aesthetic delight, vibrant and textured and dotted with engaging detail; but the human figures are much less interesting, even simplistic by contrast, and they detract from the atmosphere. This is a recurring problem with picture books, and I regret it every time.
Title: Pumpkin Eye
Author: Denise Fleming
Published: Square Fish, 2001
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 30
Total Page Count: 333,670
Text Number: 1210
Read Because: personal enjoyment, hardback borrowed from the Wilsonville Public Library
Review: I love that picture books offer the opportunity to turn a single seasonal poem into an artpiece. This poem isn't amazing but it's an adequate springboard for an unrestrained and atmospheric Halloween extravaganza. The colors are rich, dark, almost over-saturated, and feel like they're bleeding out of the lines; the lights and jack-o'-lanterns have a vibrant contrasting orange glow. I love this best when it doesn't centralize human figures—and luckily they're often silhouetted or transformed, made part of the Halloween landscape. This doesn't have enough narrative to be memorable, but it's a delight to page through.
Title: Black and Bittern Was Night
Author: Robert Heidbreder
Illustrator: John Martz
Published: Kids Can Press, 2012
Rating: 1 of 5
Page Count: 30
Total Page Count: 336,460
Text Number: 1225
Read Because: this list on scary picture books, hardback borrowed from the Wilsonville Public Library
Review: The best of this is on the cover. The interior art and language are more playful than evocative, with friendly rounded doodles on light backgrounds and silly compound words, like "tall-big" grownups and "tyke-tot" children. It never does what the invented language could do to evoke some sort of indefinable, magical, dark Halloween spookiness. I imagine it's still fun when read aloud, but it's fun by dint of concept rather than execution.
Title: Scary, Scary Halloween
Author: Eve Bunting
Illustrator: Jan Brett
Published: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017 (1986)
Rating: 2 of 5
Page Count: 40
Total Page Count: 333,575
Text Number: 1207
Read Because: on this list of Halloween picture books, hardback borrowed from the Wilsonville Public Library
Review: This is perfectly fine—colorful, detailed art and a strong Halloween vibe; a clever inversion—except for my particular (and admittedly unfair, particularly for books published in in the 80s) issue with narratives that
Title: The Bones of Fred McFee
Author: Eve Bunting
Illustrator: Kurt Cyrus
Published: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2005 (2002)
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 30
Total Page Count: 333,605
Text Number: 1208
Read Because: personal enjoyment, hardback borrowed from the Wilsonville Public Library
Review: This takes a routine piece of Halloween iconography, the safe and even silly plastic skeleton, and renders it slowly, creepingly unnerving. A lot of that is in the art, which has dynamic woodcut-style black lines and copious detail, and frames the skeleton superbly, obscuring the face, vignetting creepy little details. It's not flawless (weaker human/animal figures; the rhyming stumbles) but for a book I picked up on a whim from the Halloween shelf, I'm pleasantly surprised.
This was good but allow me to undermine its spoops: I read it at the library & when I got home to write my review I couldn't quite remember the title. "Skeleton Fred" did not, in fact, turn up results on Goodreads but it did prompt this, from Teja:
( Read more... )
Title: Pick a Pumpkin
Author: Patricia Toht
Illustrator: Jarvis
Published: Candlewick Press, 2019
Rating: 2 of 5
Page Count: 35
Total Page Count: 333,640
Text Number: 1209
Read Because: some or another Halloween picture book list that I can't refind, hardback borrowed from the Wilsonville Public Library
Review: I don't find that instructional/kid's-first picture books age well for an adult reader, so this is all about the art for me. And the art is close to fantastic: when it's pumpkins or dense landscapes it's an aesthetic delight, vibrant and textured and dotted with engaging detail; but the human figures are much less interesting, even simplistic by contrast, and they detract from the atmosphere. This is a recurring problem with picture books, and I regret it every time.
Title: Pumpkin Eye
Author: Denise Fleming
Published: Square Fish, 2001
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 30
Total Page Count: 333,670
Text Number: 1210
Read Because: personal enjoyment, hardback borrowed from the Wilsonville Public Library
Review: I love that picture books offer the opportunity to turn a single seasonal poem into an artpiece. This poem isn't amazing but it's an adequate springboard for an unrestrained and atmospheric Halloween extravaganza. The colors are rich, dark, almost over-saturated, and feel like they're bleeding out of the lines; the lights and jack-o'-lanterns have a vibrant contrasting orange glow. I love this best when it doesn't centralize human figures—and luckily they're often silhouetted or transformed, made part of the Halloween landscape. This doesn't have enough narrative to be memorable, but it's a delight to page through.
Title: Black and Bittern Was Night
Author: Robert Heidbreder
Illustrator: John Martz
Published: Kids Can Press, 2012
Rating: 1 of 5
Page Count: 30
Total Page Count: 336,460
Text Number: 1225
Read Because: this list on scary picture books, hardback borrowed from the Wilsonville Public Library
Review: The best of this is on the cover. The interior art and language are more playful than evocative, with friendly rounded doodles on light backgrounds and silly compound words, like "tall-big" grownups and "tyke-tot" children. It never does what the invented language could do to evoke some sort of indefinable, magical, dark Halloween spookiness. I imagine it's still fun when read aloud, but it's fun by dint of concept rather than execution.
