Countdown to Halloween: Kids' Books

Halloween has arrived! Since this awesome holiday is (ostensibly) about kids, I wanted to share some great books I, and plenty of other folks, loved to read and reread as a child. These are the books that made me the Halloween and horror fan I remain to this day!

Norman Bridwell, most famous for creating Clifford the Big Red Dog, had several books of charmingly-drawn monsters. I mean, they are adorable. Look at Dracula waving, for Chrissakes!

Another fantastically well-illustrated monster book was this makeup how-to by Alan Ormsby, who had starred as the most obnoxious theater troupe leader ever in Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things (1973).

Bunnicula! A classic tale of a vampire rabbit. Lots of sequels apparently.

Books like these were a treasure trove of horror movie history. In the days before VCRs, much less DVDs and the internet, the only way a kid could see a lot of these movies was to read these books and imagine them in his head...The distinctive orange-spined Crestwood Series has sent many a 30-something dude scouring the net for hours trying to figure out what the heck they were called.

As noted previously, I don't draw like I did when I was kid, but I fondly recall these two how-to books were staples for the after-school and Saturday hours.

Well, I've come to the end of my Countdown to Halloween. Hope you readers enjoyed it, and have a happy horror-day... even if this crazy lady doesn't want you to!