Books like The Widow's Broom

I love reading aloud, and I love read-aloud books that have sounds or actions that the reader and listeners can do as they follow the story. This book is delightfully physical—as you clap, clomp, wiggle, nod, and boo along with the shoes, pants, shirt, top hat, gloves, and pumpkin head that the little old woman meets as she walks home one night. Being followed by clomping shoes or wiggling pant legs might be terrifying, but this little old woman is not afraid of anything, something she proves when all these animate items come knocking at her door. Bravely she offers them a task where they can really be frightening—and the clomping shoes, wiggling pants, shaking shirt, clapping gloves, nodding hat, and boo-crying pumpkin head become the perfect scarecrow in the little old woman’s cornfield. Such a fun book!

An obvious choice, but this is such a great book I couldn’t leave it off.

I am not even sure where to begin with this one. It has rhymes and humor and a great story that is easy to follow. The book also has simple life lessons about friendship and being helpful. The characters are so cute and when reading out loud you can really put everything you’ve got into your witch voice!

Oh, and then with a hungry dragon, how can you go wrong? This one is usually the book that both kicks off and closes down Halloween time at our house and the kids never seem to get tired of it.

Oscar, the lone dachshund in the neighborhood, gets teased about his size and shape by the other dogs. 

"Weiner dog! Weiner dog!" they shout. His mother's no help. When he's leaving for school, she affectionately calls out for all to hear, "Farewell, my little Vienna sausage!"

For Halloween, Oscar's mother surprises him with a costume—a hot dog bun with mustard. Poor Oscar wanted to look scary but ends up feeling silly. On Halloween night, he's left trailing after the others with an empty treat basket. The tables are turned when a scary monster frightens the bullies and Oscar comes to their rescue.

This simple, well-told story is brought to life with wonderful Dav Pilkey illustrations that make you laugh and tug your heartstrings. It's a great book for any time of year.

It might be unusual to choose an alphabet book intended for babies and toddlers in a selection of Halloween books, but the art in this book and others in this series is worth collecting, even if you don’t have little ones to share the book with. There have been a lot of little ones reading books on my lap over the years, both my own children and now grandchildren, and I’ve learned that there are certain favorites that I might as well keep close at hand rather than shelve in the hallway with the other picture books. A few years ago I stumbled across B Is for Boo, and I loved the illustrations so much that I have collected nearly a dozen more books in Greg Paprocki’s series of alphabet books. The illustration style might best be described as “retro,” and whether readers grew up in the 1960s like… show more.

Goodnight Goon takes the familiar rhyming and simplicity of Goodnight Moon and creates something weird and wonderful.

It’s Michael Rex’s tiny details in the art that drew me in – from eyeballs in holes in the wall to tiny crawly creatures. There are loads more to look at in these ghoulish illustrations than the original book it’s parodying. 

In this razor-sharp novella, Halloween is personified in a bloodthirsty creature who haunts the nearly abandoned town of Strang. Fearful of Halloween’s deadly tricks, the remaining residents leave small live offerings at their doorsteps every night at sundown. But once a year on All Hallows’ Eve, Halloween demands a bigger and bloodier sacrifice. Dripping with dreadful atmosphere, Hunt does a masterful job of rendering a story that is both disturbing and surprisingly emotional for such a quick read. Steeped in folklore and ancient traditions, this grim and twisted tale reminds us that the old custom of trick or treating was meant to protect us from evil, and that for all its modern fun and games, Halloween is supposed to be scary.

I was scared to death by this book! It’s aimed at a YA (young adult) audience, so definitely one for ages 14+. I did my Duke of Edinburgh at school, so I fully got involved with this very creepy camping trip where everything went terribly wrong. I remembered the rain and the dark woods all too well…

Tess has written a brilliant blend of thriller and horror here, her second book. The twists and turns are so clever; it is completely, terrifyingly gripping. 

This six-book series of standalone stories begins with our heroine accepting a position as assistant to a dangerously attractive anatomist, at his eerie estate. As she struggles with her fierce attraction, she must also face the possibility that her employer is a serial murderer. Fabulously creepy, satisfyingly steamy, and enough twists to keep you page-turning late into the night.

Charles Williams is one of my guilty pleasures. The most esoteric of the famous Inklings, he wrote supernatural thrillers in which marvels take place in the midst of present-day London. This book, his last and, in my view, his best novel, is set near the end of WW II.

Two young women, killed instantly when a plane crashes onto them, find that they must work out their salvation—or its opposite—in a world where the living and the newly dead can still interact. The gestures of ordinary friendship and everyday cruelty turn out to have eternal stakes in this eerie, unforgettable novel, which I’ve reread more times than I can count. 

As a mother and a Women’s and Gender Studies educator, I was enthralled by Ayelet Waldman’s Modern Love scandal of 2005 in which she confessed to loving her husband, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Michael Chabon, more than their four children, after which she landed a spot on the Oprah Winfrey stage to defend her position. Bad Mother picks up where that controversy left off, exploring the double standard for mothers, who are expected to see and treat children as the centers of their universe. This book is irreverent and refreshing. Perfect mothers – so-called “good moms” – are for Mother’s Day portraits only. This is a book to read on any other day of the year.