By Marisa Montes
A hauntingly beautiful Halloween rhyme, sprinkled with Spanish words, that gathers all the monsters to a moonlit ball, until the scariest guests of all arrive.
On Halloween night, the book calls up every spooky thing in glowing, moonlit paintings, los esqueletos and los fantasmas, witches and werewolves, all drifting toward a haunted house for a grand monsters' ball. The rhyme is in English but drops a Spanish word into every line, so 'las brujas' and 'los muertos' arrive as naturally as breathing. The party is in full swing when a knock comes at the door, and it's the one thing every monster is terrified of: a band of human trick-or-treating children.
This is the picture book to give when you want real Halloween atmosphere, the beautiful, slightly haunted kind, for a child a bit older who loves being pleasantly spooked. Yuyi Morales's art won a Pura Belpré Award, and the woven-in Spanish makes it a gift that does something extra for a bilingual family or a child curious about the language. The reassuring turn, monsters fleeing from ordinary children, keeps it from tipping into frightening.