About the Holiday
As all the major holidays start rolling around, it’s fun to find new books to celebrate them with. Kids all over are looking forward to Halloween—devising costumes, creating spooky decorations, building eerie haunted houses, and dreaming of candy, candy, candy! Books about this most frightful of holidays is part of the excitement too! If your kids can’t wait for Halloween night, they’ll love meeting Sammy—who thinks about it all year around!
Sammy’s Spooktacular Halloween
By Mike Petrik
On Halloween night all the kids looked forward to visiting the Loomis’s barn, where “the biggest, creepiest, jump-scariest haunted house in the neighborhood” took place. Everyone in the family helped out as witches, spirits, and vampires and in making lots of thunder, fog, and eerie sounds. Sammy, especially, wanted to make “sure to give the trick-or-treaters a fang-tastically fun time.”
Copyright Mike Petrik, 2018, courtesy of Two Lions.
On the morning after Halloween, the whole family gathered for pumpkin pancakes to relive the thrill of the night before. This year, Sammy could hardly concentrate on his pancakes because he already had so many ideas for the haunted house next year. Sammy’s older siblings, Luke and Molly, thought Sammy was too young to think of cool ideas, but his dad told Sammy to “give it a whirl.”
Copyright Mike Petrik, 2018, courtesy of Two Lions.
After a couple of weeks, Sammy began testing his ideas on the family. There were a few missteps – especially the jack-o’-lantern turkey and spiders and bats décor at Thanksgiving. And a Zombie Christmas really wasn’t what the rest of the family had in mind. As the winter wore on, Sammy perfected his scares. Molly’s sleepover was bone-chilling when Sammy made a skeleton skateboard through the living room.
Instead of a marshmallow egg Easter, Sammy conjured up a Happy Hallow-Easter egg hunt. But when the family’s Fourth of July barbecue was “rained out” by the sprinkler hiding in the tree, Sammy’s dad put his foot down. “‘Your ideas are wonderfully creepy,’ said Dad, ‘but Halloween has taken over everything.” He put the kibosh on all further haunting until everyone was onboard.
Copyright Mike Petrik, 2018, courtesy of Two Lions.
Sammy was feeling pretty down until Molly and Luke told him they thought his tricks were real treats and offered to help him create more. Under Sammy’s direction, they came up with amazing new hauntings. When the barn was finally decorated, “Mom and Dad were spellbound.” Dad said, “‘We admire how you’ve stuck with it all year long,’” and Mom added, “‘So we’re naming you Halloween Spirit this year.’”
On Halloween night, Sammy welcomed all the neighbors with a spooky “‘HAPPY HALLOWEEN!’” and a “‘beware what lurks in the dark. Muah ha ha!’” The trick-or-treaters were shivering as they passed a skateboarding skeleton, an electrified Frankenstein, roiling fog, bubbling cauldrons, and bats, spiders, and ghosts galore. For Sammy, it was the best Halloween ever—and he was already planning for next year.
Copyright Mike Petrik, 2018, courtesy of Two Lions.
Young Halloween lovers—i.e. all kids—will find Sammy’s Spooktacular Halloween frightfully funny and, no doubt, inspirational too. From the list of Sammy’s haunted house elements titled “Scares! Spooks!” on the front cover to the experimental tricks to the other holiday mash-ups, Sammy’s imaginative ideas will enthrall kids. Engineers-in-the-making will eagerly await each page turn as they mull over the possible ways to recreate Sammy’s devices. While Sammy learns that a bit of moderation in his year-long quest for the best Halloween ever may be in order, Mike Petrik’s inclusion of helpful siblings and supportive parents is heartening and will please readers—especially youngest family members.
Petrik’s pages are electrified with bold, vibrant colors and Sammy’s thrilling Halloween haunts that move, shiver, and shake. A house full of fog, ghosts that rappel into Dad’s cereal, a turkey carved like a jack-o’-lantern, and a crew of zombie snowmen are just some of the delights awaiting readers. Images of Luke and Molly assisting Sammy and Mom and Dad’s happy faces as they reward Sammy for his hard work will bring a smile. The final two-page spread of the family’s haunted barn is a showstopper that kids will want to explore.
A terrific book to inspire Halloween fun and sibling harmony, Sammy’s Spooktacular Halloween would be a super (natural) selection for home and school libraries.
Ages 3 – 7
Two Lions, 2018 | ISBN 978-1503901797
To learn more about Mike Petrik, his books, and his art, visit his website.
Read a New Book Month Activity
Jack-o’-Lantern Bookend or Decoration
With carefully chosen rocks you can create one jack-o’-lantern or a whole pumpkin patch! Use your rock jack-o’-lanterns as decoration for Halloween or as a boo-tiful bookend to keep your books tidy!
Supplies
- Round, smooth rock ( or rocks in a variety of sizes)
- Orange craft paint, and other colors for a multi-hued pumpkin patch
- Black permanent marker or black craft paint
- Short sturdy twig (one for each rock)
- Hot glue gun or strong glue
- Paintbrush
Directions
- Clean and dry the rock
- Paint the rock, let dry
- Draw or paint a jack-o’-lantern face on the rock, let dry
- Glue the short twig to the top of the rock pumpkin
You can find Sammy’s Spooktacular Halloween at these booksellers
Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Books-a-Million | IndieBound
Picture Book Review
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