Sue Hendra

Bones, eyes, arms, legs, and bodies are scary dancing in the dark, until the lights are turned on revealing a Halloween costume party.

Scary Party

Sarah Sammis

I'm always looking for monster books for Sean. Books that satisfy his craving for monsters while being humorous enough to keep Harriet engaged are extra special. Scary Party by Sue Hendra fits the bill perfectly.

The brightly colored cover featuring monsters in costumes coming in at all different angles caught my attention at the library. The book has an engaging but simple plot of monsters at a Halloween costume ball. Each page focuses on a different body part: heads, eyes, feet, hands and so forth of the monsters as they dance and cavort.

Often times in these monster picture books the monsters aren't really monsters. They are children pretending to be monsters and that isn't revealed until near or at the end. That revelation often bursts the bubble of fun for my son. He wants monsters being monsters all the way through. Scary Party follows through and delivers. The monsters are in fact monsters. They just happen to be dressed in costumes for Halloween. Keeping them monsters from start to finish makes this book a five star picture book for Sean.

Harriet on the other hand enjoys the repetition and the building up of the monsters from the sum of their parts. She likes looking at all the different hands, feet, eyes and so forth. When I read with her we stop for questions like: "Do I have hands like that? No!" or "Do I have feet like that? No!"

The book is also short enough for Sean to read to his sister, something he did a number of times while we had the book checked out from the library. If you have monster lovers who are young children they will like Scary Party.

Scary Party

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