Boo Time! Syd Hoff's Danny and the Dinosaur--Happy Halloween! by Bruce Hale and David Cutting

Danny was excited. "Tonight is Halloween, and I can't wait!

It will be so much fun!"

"Absolutely," said Danny's friend, the dinosaur."What's Halloween?"

Danny explains that Halloween is a night when everyone wears spooky costumes and goes out to trick or treat from house to house and get candy.

"Can I go?" asked the dinosaur.

"Sure," said Danny. But first you need a costume."

The costume is a bit of a problem. Danny's buddy is so big that Danny uses up his whole roll of gauze, and the dinosaur still doesn't look like a mummy. At last, Danny gets an inspiration and pulls down a curtain to turn his friend into a enormous ghost.

Still, trick or treating turns out to a bit tricky for a very tall ghost. But Danny knows what to do. He takes his friend to some apartment buildings, where he fills his treat bag at third-story windows. And then Danny takes his dinosaur to a Halloween party, where they play "Pin the Wart on the Witch" and "Pumpkin Bowling," and his dinosaur discovers that he is terrific at bobbing for apples.

Thanks to his big mouth, the dinosaur was the best apple bobber ever!

It's the best Halloween ever for the two unlikely pals, in Bruce Hale's Danny and the Dinosaur: Happy Halloween (HarperFestival, 2016). With its holiday stickers pages and fold-out poster, this one is a great sugar-free treat for young Halloween-goers and a bit of a blast from the past for parents and grandparents who likely honed their early reading chops on easy readers based on Danny's adventures with the dino who followed him home from the museum. This one is great fun and reading practice for another generation of beginning readers.