Hallomean, The Monster Who Stole Halloween

Want to ruin Halloween? Leave a monster out.

Every Halloween, the monsters of Spooksland cross over to Earth for one night of trick-or-treating. This year Grumbletoes trips, spills the magic dust, and there isn't enough left for everyone. One by one, his four friends step through the portal without him.

But he finds his own way across. If he can't have Halloween, then nobody will.

There's a hurt monster emptying every candy bucket in town, a small boy in a dinosaur costume finding nothing on his porch, five friends working out that both sides owe an apology, and a whole Halloween story about friendship and forgiveness. About seven minutes to read aloud, start to finish.

Spooky, but not scary

If you have a child who loves monsters but not nightmares, this one is safe. Nothing jumps out. Nobody gets hurt. The monsters are fuzzy, round and slightly ridiculous, and the scariest thing in the book is a bad mood. Halloween shows up the way a five-year-old actually meets it: glowing pumpkins on porches, buckets of treats, costumes on the sidewalk.

Is it right for your child's age?

Written for ages 4 to 8. Four-year-olds enjoy it read aloud and will follow the candy. Five- and six-year-olds get the whole thing, including the part where Grumbletoes knows he's being mean and does it anyway. Seven- and eight-year-olds catch the wordplay at the end.

Why it lands at this age

Grumbletoes isn't simply naughty. He does something unkind because he was hurt first, and children around five and six are just beginning to understand the difference between those two things. The book doesn't tidy it away. His friends were wrong to leave him behind, he was wrong to take the candy, and both sides have to say so out loud before anything gets fixed. Children who have recently been left out of something at school tend to go very still in the middle of this one.

"You were Hallo-MEAN," giggled Snickerboo. "But then you turned Hallo-NICE!"

Halloween comes once a year. Worth having this one on the shelf before the pumpkins go out.