Mummies and Monsters and Zombies--Oh, My! Super-Dooper Spooky Doodle Book by Ryan Sias

Despite the hot and steamy dog days of summer, Halloween is drawing near, and children's minds will soon turn toward the spooky season.

What to wear? Witchy hats or wizard's cloaks? What to be? A big black bat or a scary cat?

But while they're waiting for that time to roll around, Ryan Sias has his new Super-Duper Spooky Doodle Book (Super-Duper Doodle Books) (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2018), packed full of comic scary characters--Victor the Vampire, Grik the Goblin, Zoey the Zombie, Wanda the Witch, Wayne the Werewolf, and Gus the Ghost, et al. Each one gets his or her own double-page spread with drawings to complete, scenes to fill out, and story starters to get kids sketching and writing.

Like man-made monsters? There's Frank N. Stein and the chance to create his whole family and his, er, manufactured pets. If zombies are your yen, Maya the Zombie has some missing body parts to complete. There are hidden pictures to find, and if creativity fails, the drawings make for some fun coloring or even tracing activities. Good for quiet times during hot mid-days or rainy afternoons, and sturdy enough backseat fun with no more than a box of colored pencils required, Sias's latest in his Super-Duper Doodle series, even offers puzzles and games, and for the youngest users whose drawing abilities are still developing--STICKERS!

Doodle Me, Do! My Beastly Book of Hilarious Heroes by Vincent Boudgourd

MEET THE HILARIOUS HEROES!

THEY'RE THE ENEMIES OF EVIL! THE PROTECTORS OF THE PEOPLE!

TOO BAD THEY'RE ALSO A BUNCH OF SCAREDY CATS, SHOW OFFS, AND CLUMSY SLEEPYHEADS.

IN OTHER WORDS, THEY REALLY NEED YOUR HELP!

GRAB YOUR OWN GADGETS OF JUSTICE AND WHIP THESE HEROES INTO SHAPE!

Long, dreary winter days lie ahead, and kids need a stock of paper-and-pencil fun to tide them over long stormy afternoons, long car rides, and long waits at the dentist's office. Vincent Boudgourd's My Beastly Book of Hilarious Heroes: 150 Ways to Doodle, Scribble, Color and Draw (Owlkids, 201l) is ready for a heroic rescue for just such moments. In generous-sized paperbound format, this book, which boasts "150 ways to doodle, scribble, color, and draw," is actually open-ended enough in its prompts to provide even more things to do, and just a little judicious use of the home scanner, copier, and printer can actually multiply the fun and give young artists a chance to try out different ideas from the same page.

Some instructions, such as "Help Super-Invisible disappear by coloring this page black" could be accomplished by preschoolers with only a black crayon or #2 pencil. Others, such as "Change this ordinary family into a family of heroes. or"Draw what you think the evil villain the BIG CHEESE and his partner MILK SHAKE look like" will challenge older kids to let their imaginations have sway. Some pages provide fun practice for skills such as connect-the-dot activities, mazes ("Can the bad guy escape through the web of the Web Master?"), finding differences, and cutting, coloring, and pasting--superhero door hangers for the artist's bedroom or a postcard of the well-known kid superhero "Super Persuader" in which the young artist adds his own headshot, cuts out the card, writes a message, and addresses to his parents.

This latest book of doodle activities joins its companion titles from Owlkids Books, My Beastly Book of Twisted Tales: 150 Ways to Doodle, Scribble, Color and Draw My Beastly Book of Monsters: 150 Ways to Doodle, Scribble, Color and Draw and My Beastly Book of Silly Things: 150 Ways to Doodle, Scribble, Color and Draw, all ways to spark creativity and encourage skills in an easily tote-able format. Pair these with a spare pack of washable markers, colored pencils, or crayons for a stocking stuffer, or squirrel them away in the car or activity shelf at home for those moments when a little silly fun is just the right anecdote for the winter blahs.

Boo! How to Draw a Happy Witch and 99 Things That Go Bump in the Night by Joy Sikorski

Little Man, an adventurous cat, takes a moonlit stroll through the woods and finds many things--a crow and its alter ego, a scarecrow, Jack-o'Lanterns, ghostly trick-or-treaters, a snail, and, as promised, a Happy Witch. These and many more characters of the night are illustrated, in step-by-step line drawings, for young artists to copy, and even Little Man the cat gets his turn to be the artists' model.

Drawing books aimed at the Halloween season are few and far between, and Joy Sikorski's and husband Nick Sunday's just published How to Draw a Happy Witch and 99 Things That Go Bump in the Night (Sterling, 2011) temporarily has the September market all to themselves. Their drawing lessons, done in about ten steps for each figure, follow Little Man's wanderings, and as promised provide 99 subjects for their sketchy cartoon lessons. Most of these figures are not all all scary--a bird, chipmunk, porcupine--in the spooky sense, but for kids who love to draw and need just a few lines to get them going, this little spiral-bound book might provide the inspiration.

For children who yearn to learn the art of sketching seriously spooky creatures of the dark, however, the go-to guide is still Lee J. Ames' classic Draw 50 Monsters: The Step-by-Step Way to Draw Creeps, Superheroes, Demons, Dragons, Nerds, Dirts, Ghouls, Giants, Vampires, Zombies, and Other Curiosa, one of his beloved Draw 50 series, which will keep most any art-loving kid busy until, oh, Memorial Day at least!