Traditionally in most parts of the western world, Halloween marks the end of summer and harvest season and start of cold, dark winter and is celebrated on October 31st every year. Things associated with Halloween are ghosts, scary costumes, flying witches, kids going out for trick-or-treating, all things spooky and of course decorating pumpkins. Since we don’t really celebrate Halloween in India in a big way and the concept is pretty much limited to the metros and mini metros, our KBC childoos read books on Halloween to be a part of the fun! Here are some recommended spooky and non spooky books on all things Halloween shared by our parents!
For 0 – 3 Years
Spooky Pookie by Sandra Boynton (0-4 Years)
Boo! Baa, La La La! is Sandra Boynton’s latest release in July 2021 for Halloween which is described as “a long-lost cousin of the legendary Moo Baa la la la!” which everyone at kbc adores!
Where Is Baby’s Pumpkin by Karen Katz (0-4 years). Every baby/toddler adores Karen Katz’ books!
Turn the Wheel: Spooky Pants (Priddy Books) – 8 pages
Spooky House by Roger Priddy for 2-4 years
Little Blue Truck’s Halloween: A Halloween Lift the Flap Book for Kids (16 pages) for 0-3 years
A teeny tiny Ghosts tries to scare a teeny tiny mouse. Fun guaranteed read.
-Divya
Busy Halloween (Busy Books) (1-5 Years)
Peppa’s Pumpkin Party (2-4 years)
There’s a Witch in Your Book by Tom Fletcher (2-5 years). Tom Fletcher’s Who’s in your book series is a superhit with our toddlers!
Monster Stories For Under Fives (2-5 Years)
You’re Not So Scary, Sid! (Puppet Pop Ups) for 2-6 years. Shaifali Gupta has done an amazing read aloud of this book in the group!
Mrs Blackhat for 0-5 years (32 pages) Punidha has this one and has shared the inside pages in the fb group here. In her words:
This is a story about Mrs Blackhat who wants her ginger cat to be turned black and she tries all her spell techniques. So, she purchases things related to magic from her ‘Shopalot’ account and her cat is still ginger after so many attempts. So, she wishes not to order anything from that site and continues with her work but one day, she received a parcel from Shopalot and again, she gives a try to make her ginger cat black. Will this magic work out to make the cat black and make Mrs Blackhat happy?
There are other books in this series.
101 Spooky Bums for 2 years+. Punidha has shared the hilarious inside pages here.
For 3 to 6 Years
I Went Trick-or-Treating (Bloomsbury) for 3-7 years – Achira has this one!
Pete the Cat: Trick or Pete for 3-5 yrs. This book is Charu Dawar Vyas’ son’s fave 🙂
The Berenstain Bears Trick or Treat for 3-7 years
Love Monster And The Scary Something (3 Years+)
Trick Or Treat Parakeet (3-5 Years)
Peppa’s Halloween Sticker Activity Book (3-6 Years)
Halloween Activity Book (dreamland) (3-6 Years) Achira has this one. There are quite a few activity books based on Halloween!
Room On The Broom (3-6 Years) You can read the review here
Thatha’s Pumpkin (3-6 Years) The Review can be found here
The Great Monster Hunt (3-7 years)
Pig the Monster (Pig the Pug) – We all love Pig the Pug series by Aaron Blabey and have grabbed many books from the legendary Scholastic Sale every year! Scholastic India has quite a few books in this series which can be ordered from Scholastic India via our kbc storefront as well. Scholastic India always has special offers on.
For 4-8 Years
The Bad Seed Presents: The Good, the Bad, and the Spooky (The Food Group) by Jory John and Pete Oswald. Punidha has shared inside pages here in the fb group.
Winnie the Witch series by Valerie Thomas (Author), Korky Paul (Illustrator). Divya has shared lots of inside pages of 2 books from this series here in the fb group – the illustrations are breathtaking! In her words:
Winnie lives in a black house where everything from chair to bathtub is black. Her cat Wilbur is black too. So when Wilbur is awake he’s visible and Winnie has no problem moving around the house. But Winnie tumbles or trips when Wilbur is sleeping … why? Because Wilbur has green eyes.
So Winnie does her Abracadabra magic and changes Wilbur’s to green and then to rainbow color. But did this solve the issue? What did she finally do?
Winnie loves traveling in her broom. But recently she keeps getting crashed into things on her way. She finally decided to walk back to her home but doesn’t SEE the hole and tumbles down the stairs and finally ends up in a shop, the shopkeeper offers to help her… what was the issue with Winnie ? How did she get help and was she able to fly again is the remaining story.
Both books are Absolutely No spook and a fun guaranteed read. Illustrations are just lovely and funny too…
Dragon’s Halloween: An Acorn Book (Dragon #4) by Dav Pilkey [ACORN BOOKS BY SCHOLASTIC are for 4-6 years]. Achira has this one as well as the other Dragon books in this series which we all grabbed from the Scholastic Sale. This book and other Dragon books can be ordered from Scholastic India via our kbc storefront as well. Scholastic India always has special offers on.
Monster Musical Chairs (4-7 Years)
Biscuit’s Pet & Play Halloween (4-8 years)
Happy Halloween, Biscuit! (4-8 Years)
THE GHOST LIBRARY by David Melling (4-8 years) Achira has this one!
What did the Monster Child Eat today (4-8 Years) Review Here
Tejaswi Vadgama recommends Winnie the Witch series and The Little Old Lady Who Was Not Afraid Of Anything (4-8 Years).
Achira recommends Witches, Wizards & Magicians
The Witch Next Door (4-8 Years) Asha still has a 40 year old version of the Book. The Witch Next Door Kindle Edition
Usborne Halloween Mazes for 5- 8 years (64 pages)
Scholastic India has quite a few books on Halloween which can be ordered from Scholastic India via our kbc storefront as well. Scholastic India always has special offers on.:
Ready Freddy!#08 Halloween Fraidy-Cat (for 7 years+) – Our #kbcchildoos find READY FREDDY series super funny!
The Pepper Party Is Completely Cursed (The Pepper Party #3) – this would be for 6/7 years onwards (128 pages)
For 6 Years and Above
FLIPPED: Adventure Stories / Ghost Stories for 8 years+ for advanced readers otherwise 10 yrs+. Achira has this one as well. Mini review by Aditi:
If your child is a big fan of adventure as well as spooky stories with just the right amount of horror element in it, Flipped is the book for him/her. The book has a unique style. One part has 6 adventure stories and when you flip the book, the other has 6 ghost stories. One can flip the book to read adventure stories or Ghost stories as per liking. The stories are from various authors. The story ‘How to train your Ghost and other animals’ by Vibha Batra will keep you giggling while ‘The Enchanted Umbrella ‘ by Prashant Pinge will melt your heart.
The Halloween Hoax (Nancy Drew and the Clue Crew) – Asha says excellent read for 6-9 years. And that Aarini loved the entire series!
Moin And The Monster (6-10 years)
Rowley Jefferson’s Awesome Friendly Spooky Stories by Jeff Kinney for 7 years+ (224 pages)
Goosebumps books (8-12 Years)
Goosebumps Horrorland Weirdo Halloween (8-12 years) – Achira got this for 9yo Divit
Ruskin Bond Ghost Stories (8-12 Years)
Wizardology: The Book of the Secrets of Merlin (8-12 Years) The rest of the Ologies series
Aunt Grizelda’s Treasury Of Grim And Grisly Rhymes for 10+. This book is from Scholastic so can be ordered via kbc’s Scholastic storefront as well. Aarini has shared a mini review here. Quoting her:
This book is full of poems, except the poems, are very dark! They do have a life lesson at the end of most of them by the way. There are poems about a girl with a highly peculiar diet, tiny spiders, ice lakes and human-taking video games. The illustrations are top-notch ( and sometimes slightly disturbing 😉 ). It is truly a horror and entertainment movie rolled into one book. The recommended age for this is 10+ years ONLY for kids who enjoy dark humour and satire.
Fold-Up Halloween Fortune Tellers (10 Years+)
Janet Praveen’s daughter enjoys these books – Witch Zelda’s Beauty Potion: A Spellbinding Pop-up Book, Three Little Ghosties, Sir Charlie Stinky Socks: The Mummy’s Gold and I’m Going To Eat You! – A Spooky Pop-up Book (4-6 years)
Namrata recommends The Itsy Bitsy Pumpkin (2-4 Years), Roald Dahl The Witches (review) (7-9 Years) and Creepy Carrots (4-8 Years)
There is a new The Witches graphic novel published by Scholastic too! Once you click our kbc special scholastic storefront link – you can type THE WITCHES in the search bar to find the book!
Tejal Chopra and her kid enjoys – Fairy Tales From the Brothers Grimm (9 years and above) and 1.2 Boo!
Happy Halloween, Trick or Treating and Happy Reading!
Special thanks to everyone who helped curating this post – Achira, Janet Praveen, Namrata, Tejaswi Vadagama, Tejal Chopra, Divya and of course #the14yearold.
[Note from Team Kids Book Café: For your convenience, affiliate links (MARKED IN PINK) to some of the book titles & images have been added to enable you to buy the books from AMAZON, should you wish to! A very small amount of money comes to kidsbookcafe.com when you purchase a book via the amazon affiliate link provided (at absolutely no extra cost to you!). Do let us know if you need information about other children’s books by writing to asha@kidsbookcafe.com.]
