Halloween Hoots and Howls

Joan Horton. Henry Holt & Company, $15.95 (32pp) ISBN 978-0-8050-5805-5

In zesty, candy-corny poems from a first-time author, a witch places an ad for a ""Turbo broomstick (color--jet)/ With dual exhausts. FM cassette."" Dr. Frankenstein shops for heads of cabbage and ears of corn, and a top-notch ""Halloweeny Quiz"" offers 10 diverting riddle-couplets that work as verse and as a game. The mixed-media cartoons, on white or airbrush-speckled backgrounds, anticipate but never upstage the inventive punch lines. Ages 4-7. (Oct.)

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