Two green eyes peer out into the darkness and watch carefully as a skeleton passes by. Soon there are witches, goblins, gremlins, a ghost, and even a vampire parading by as the narrator wonders if it's safe to go outside. It must be Halloween, but when will it ever be safe to go out? Check out this spooky tale to find out.

The Bottom Line: Bunting and Brett are a fabulous combination when it comes to picture books. With intriguing text and fantastic, full color illustrations with lots of spooky details, they'll keep you guessing who the narrator is until the very end. Enthusiastically recommended for spooky, seasonal reading for kids in grades 1 - 3.

This review also appears at the Mini Book Bytes Book Review Blog. ( )

I enjoyed reading this to my little friend Andres. He is six years old and learning via virtual school lessons. I am helping him by reading to him, explaining the meaning of the words, and when there are many of the same images, such as the pumpkins, he is learning to count the objects. He loved counting 16 pumpkins

He liked this book a lot. I child at heart who remembers learning to read with the help of my local librarian when I was five, I very much want to model her skills when she lovingly taught me to read.

In this tale, the cats in the front of the house, hiding under the bushes on Halloween Eve, are frightened by the trick or treaters as they run past wearing their very spooky costumes.

For some very strange reason I thought the point of view was of a scared kid sitting at home watching the halloween activities from the window. To my surprise it was the point of view of the creepy cats hiding from below the house. To me this was even more (not really) frightening because I'm terrified of cats. I loved how the characters were all gender neutral. allowing kids to be able to identify with any character they wanted. this was a good book. entertaining none the less and I loved the point of view it was written in. ( )

The books I have read from Eve Bunting, are usually deep and touch on real-life situations. This book, by her, was just the opposite, it was a cute book about Halloween. The family cat is scared of all the “monsters” going around the neighborhood, but, the “monsters” are just the trick or treaters. It shows kids, that they’re not the only ones scared on Halloween, even the cat was scared. I really enjoyed this cute story, and I want to read this story to my kids at work, I think they will enjoy it! ( )

Eve Bunting starts out "Scary, Scary Halloween" the way she starts out most of her books, with rhyming.
(This is what I love about her books.) She will probably scare young readers with the first few pages encouraging them to stay inside on Halloween. But all along, everyone is just dressed up in all the scary Halloween costumes just outside trick-o-treating. At the beginning of the book you see big green cat eyes on a black page, and at the end of the book you notice that these are from cats hiding waiting to come out and play when all the kids go inside. The cats are actually the narrators of the story which I thought was really cool. This would be a great book to introduce young readers to Halloween if they have not experienced it themselves. ( )