Bah! Halloween Humbug! Click, Clack, Boo! A Tasty Treat by Doreen Cronin

FARMER BROWN DID NOT LIKE HALLOWEEN.

WITCHES GAVE HIM NIGHTMARES.

But do the merry pranksters out in the barnyard give a marshmallow peanut? No, they do not.

Farmer Brown may pull the shades, hang a DO NOT DISTURB sign on his locked front door, put on his fuzzy, footy PJs, and douse all the lights, but out in the barn the cows, sheep, pigs, and chickens are all set to par-tay in the hay! Cow skeletons and princess pigs cavort and prance, sheep sprout witches' hats, and the chickens--are those the hens under those ghostly shrouds?

Snug under his quilt, Farmer Brown can't help hearing the racket being raised in the barn--and the leafy footfalls near the house, followed by  a tap, tap, tapping at his door. A furtive peek under the shade shows a shadowy, cloaked figure, haunting the house from under a dark tree outside. Then there is an even stranger sound.

"QUACK, QUACK, QUACKLE."

QUACKLE?

With all this suspicious activity, what's a conscientious farmer to do?

As all readers will have guessed by now, Dracula Duck will see to it that Farmer Brown will soon be raising the roof out in the barn with his critter tricksters in this Halloween treat, Doreen Cronin's and Betsy Lewin's latest, Click, Clack, Boo!: A Tricky Treat (Atheneum Books, 2013). Cronin's verses are still dressed with her characteristic verve and rhythm, and Betsy Lewin's illustrations (see her chickens comically draped as ghosts) glow with Halloween humor like a smiling Jack-o'-lantern. That big ole' harvest moon lights the scene, done up in a midnight blue background with plenty of Halloween orange accents, while the pigs scarf up candy corn at liberty, the sheep boogie down, and everybody gets a prize. It's a happy holiday treat for fans of Cronin and Lewin's barnyard bunch.

Other books in this rowdy rural series include the best-selling Click, Clack, Moo: Cows That Type, Thump, Quack, Moo: A Whacky Adventure, (see my review here) and Dooby Dooby Moo, to name but a few.