ABCs at the Haunted House

August 1, 2019
Join in on this alphabetical haunted house tour. The text's formatting teases that it will be rhyming verse; sadly, it's not: "Let's go for apples! / BOO--it's a bat! How about that! / Candy corn--yum!" The spreads feature text on the verso and the letters presented on that spread capitalized in a small callout on the top right of the recto. Vibrant, seemingly digital illustrations highlighted with Halloween colors fill in the space between and give readers opportunities to find those items listed in the text. Q and X are represented by "quivering bones" and "X-ray," and the typical Halloween cast is accounted for: ghost, mummy, vampire, witch, zombie. Even though the called-out letters appear only as capitals, many of the representative words start with lowercase letters. And while some of the sentences include stretch vocabulary and great alliteration ("Freaky fangs all around"), many are like the spelling homework schoolchildren might turn in: "Pumpkins come in all sizes"; "What's under the stairs?" A final spread includes a tiny thumbnail of each item from the text and the letter it begins with. There is no throughline, and readers may startle to find the kids, one pale and one with beige skin, with their invitation on the "HI" spread when they've already been inside the house. Lacking rhymes, lowercase letters, and a story, this is middling ABC fare. (Picture book. 3-6)

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September 2, 2019
Holiday imagery and a few surprises await readers as they follow two children on a tour of the Halloween Haunted House, identifying letters and objects along the way. Walters highlights each letter of the alphabet into an account of what the kids discover roaming the home’s rooms and grounds. A small panel depicting the letters showcased in a spread appears on its right-hand-page, and the words beginning with those letters boldfaced appear at left in lines of text (the spread for V and W reads “Make way for Vampire and the Witch!”). The flat digital art adds little but festive images to this uneven abecedarian; despite humorous details and a cast of friendly monsters, the uneasy marriage of concepts isn’t quite successful. Ages 4–7.