Morphing the Monster: The Monsterator by Keith Graves

MASTER EDGAR DREADBURY
FOUND HALLOWEEN A BORE.

THE WHOLE BUSINESS OF COSTUMES
WAS A MISERABLE CHORE.

Master Edgar has the spooky mansion, the scary tree outside his window, the jack o' lantern on his candle stand, and the Eddie Munster haircut already. He hardly needs any Halloweenification. But duty calls, and after Edgar rejects his old vampire, zombie, and clown costumes, he drags himself downtown to shop for something suitable. Suddenly he spots a store he'd never seen before, The Emporium. It certainly has the right atmosphere.

IT WAS DANK AND DARK AS A CELLAR.

"SERVICE!!" HE CALLED.

When no one appears, Edgar looks around on his own. But there are no costumes to be seen.

But then he does see something that looks promising. It's a musty, dusty contraption with an enticing name:THE MONSTERATOR! The phlegmatic Edgar guesses instantly what this machine is supposed to do.

"OH, WHY NOT?"

Edgar puts his dime in the slot, steps inside, and ....

As electric sparks crackle through his body, his hair stands on end and Edgar quivers, shivers, and...

EDGAR WAS MONSTERATED

FROM HIS KNEES TO HIS NOSE

AND MONSTERATED SOME MORE; FROM HIS TEETH TO HIS TOES.

And it's GREAT! Edgar has horns. He's hairy and scary, with dragon scales and tail. He's gorgeously gruesome and he scares the heck out of everyone. It's the best Halloween ever.

But when Edgar is done chasing yowling black cats, squeamish squirrels, and terrified trick-or-treating tots, he returns for his de-Monsteration! But... The Emporium, Monsterator and all, has vanished.

Has Edgar learned his lesson? Has he seen the folly of trying to fool Mother Nature? Is he filled with regret? Is there some wise wizard troll or hairy fairy ready to reverse his monstrous transformation?

Uh, NO. And Edgar likes it that way, in Keith Graves' duly droll The Monsterator (Roaring Brook Press, 2014). As illustrator, the appropriately surnamed Graves offers all the trappings and tropes of the monster mansion, done up in suitably somber and murky tones, and as author his quaint and curious quatrains summon up the spirit of that other Edgar (Poe), while providing some delightfully funny rhymes.

But... THERE'S MORE! At the back of the book Graves provides readers with their own chance to monsterate Edgar with a stack of quarter-page flip pages so that kids can re-form Edgar from head to toe with a total of 625 new monsterated versions of our hero. This book is a total hoot--one kids will love to share as they combine and re-combine the possibilities. The book will wear out before the kids do, making Graves' The Monsterator a sure-fire hit for scary season reading.

Everything Halloweenish: Halloween Book of Fun by National Geographic Kids

There are lots of Halloween helper books around, but as in the famous spooky folktale, There's Always Room for One More!

And just in time for the scary season comes the notable National Geographic Kids Press with a brand-new omnibus compendium with pencil-and-paper fun for one or many, ideas for really creative costumes made from easily found materials and with Halloween face makeup also from common household ingredients, recipes for Halloween treats, tips for carving kooky Jack-o'-lanterns, and on and on.

There are mazes, word scrambles, fall leaf rubbings, optical illusions, and hidden picture pages for quiet activities at home, school, or youth groups. And then there are the costumes! All require a little scissors and paint know-how from adults or older kids, but there is plenty for younger spooks to do in the process. How about dressing as "spaghetti and meatballs?" A circle of cardboard (with a hole for the trick-or-treater's head in the center) for a table, with glued-on "tablecloth" fabric and a paper plate, filled with a spaghetti made from large round pom-pom balls, pasta-like yarn, and some red felt "sauce." Or how about dressing up as a bag of popcorn, in a cardboard box with head and armholes, painted to look like a movie snack bag and hat covered with real glued-on popcorn? Or for a truly original costume, how about a washing machine? All it takes is a big cardboard box, some white paint, a black marker, and you're ready for a load (of treats, that is!).

And for truly original pumpkin carvings, there are plenty of design ideas, (with stencils and decals), including the novel idea of peeling back strips of the hard shell to allow light to shine eerily through the remaining pulp.

Want to keep the kids close to home on the big night? NG Kids Halloween Book of Fun (National Geographic Kids) (National Geographic Kids, 2011) has plenty of ideas for making your own frightful haunted house right on the premises, with all the usual props and a few new ones, and with an added section on making fake blood and hairy moles from common pantry ingredients!

Even the fake tombstone epitaphs (more boxes, white paint, and markers) give the spooky punster a field day--I. M. GONE and YUL B. NEXT, for example.

All of this in a very inexpensive, sturdy and colorful paperback book, adorned with NGS's signature color photographs and plenty of Halloween jokes and snappy and informational sidebars to add to the fun. This little book is a handy household or classroom resource for the upcoming season.

Diabolically Delish: Extreme Halloween: The Ultimate Guide to Making Halloween Scary Again by Tom Nardone

What would Halloween be if not for the extreme genius of Tom Nardone? Having come up with seemingly every devilishly delightful thing to do with a pumpkin in his best-selling Extreme Pumpkins: Diabolical Do-It-Yourself Designs to Amuse Your Friends and Scare Your Neighbors and his sequel Extreme Pumpkins II: Take Back Halloween and Freak Out a Few More Neighbors, (see my posts here,) in his newest, Extreme Halloween: The Ultimate Guide to Making Halloween Scary Again, our Halloween hero zooms his focus out to include all things spooky--extreme yard tricks and plenty of extreme craftings that turn any house or garage into a haunted house.

Outdoors there is plenty to amuse the neighbors and approaching trick or treaters--skull trees, hand-hammered wooden caskets, ghosts that seem to float and swoop down zip lines, porch scarecrows and ghouls, graveyards concocted from mulch, pumpkin heads, stuffed gloves, shoes, and other castoff clothing, and door decor with a surprise for those intrepid souls who dare to get that far.

Inside the house are cool ghoul food, bleeding baked goods, the toilet candy bowl, and other plentiful recipes for creepy comestibles. Then there is "the haunted lavatory," complete with skull soap, the terrifying toilet (Don't ask!), and the shadowy hangman in the shower. Inventive costume ideas abound, with hilarious suggestions for outfitting those lame guests who come cluelessly unadorned with the proper garb.

Nardone doesn't neglect his first love, the jack-o'-lantern, in this new book, however. There are flaming pumpkin heads (Caution: Warn Fire Department Before Using), graveyard jacks, pumpkin-head millipedes, and many other silly-spooky squash creations.

No library or ghostly trickster should be without these three handsome Halloween standbys, ghoulishly gigglesome, horrifically hilarious, and tantalizingly terrifying as Halloween itself should be.