cover image HALLOWEEN NIGHT

HALLOWEEN NIGHT

Arden Druce, , illus. by David W. Wenzel. . Rising Moon, $14.95 (32pp) ISBN 978-0-87358-762-4

In this hair-raising tour of a mansion and cornfield, readers confront creatures of the night. Druce (Witch, Witch Come to My Party) generates suspense with rhyming questions that are answered with a trembling turn of the page. A diaphanous form lurks behind a broken window ("Who can walk through closed doors/ with a thud and a thump?/ 'I can,' said the ghost"), bats swoop and a skeleton emerges from a crypt. Wenzel's (The Christmas Path) naturalistic watercolors and tilted fields of vision enhance the unsettling ambience. Ages 4-8. (July)