Name: One Halloween Night
ISBN: 9780439755382

Mark Teague

One Halloween Night

Sarah Sammis

I've mentioned before how much I love Mark Teague's 1940s style of paintings. He's the sort of illustrator whose books I will read regardless of the subject or the author. I have also mentioned that my children love Halloween books. One Halloween Night by Mark Teague was a must read book when we saw it at the library.

The book takes the sort of what-if worries of Stinky Face in Happy Halloween Stinky Face and plays them straight. Wendell, Floyd and Leona all have costume problems. They also have to drag along Floyd's baby sister Alice. Then there's the bad or weird candy. To make matters even worse, they're spotted by the bullies! Sounds like a typical Halloween for me as a kid.

But this is a Mark Teague book. He tends to put magic in the least expected places, like the lost and found or in a short cut to school (review coming). Here, it being Halloween, the costumes give their wearers new powers: invisibility potions, swashbuckling, fairy magic. It's just what they need to defeat the bullies and save the night.