Two children and a puppy bound across their backyard, "Looking high./ Looking low./ Off on a ghost hunt./ Here we go!" They "scat" past bats and "run
and shout" past skeletons. When they retreat from a billowy apparition (which wears sneakers just like Mom's), the bats and skeletons become falling leaves and spindly trees. Vaughan's (Whistling Dixie) intermittent rhythms and long refrains proceed fitfully, but her italicized verbs add energy and crank up the wordplay. In color-saturated linocuts, Oliver and Amanda Pig series illustrator Schweninger pictures the hearty hunters marching in step. Even timid ghostbusters won't shiver. Ages 3-7. (Sept.)
