I previously posted about
The Ghoul, the memorable entry from Jack Prelutsky's
Nightmares: Poems to Trouble Your Sleep (1976). The ghoul perched patiently outside a window, waiting for the children within to come out. That poem refused to be forgotten, partly because of the explicit descriptions of the ghoul's gruesome intentions (reproduced in their entirety in the previous post, linked above).
Prelutsky revisited this theme for younger readers a year later in his 1977 love-letter to October thirty-first,
"It's Halloween" (illustrations by Marylin Hafner).
Only this time it's
The Goblin holding patient vigil outside a window, and any violence it may wish to visit upon the child inside is left to our imagination. This monster only wants to play... or so it says.
Prelutsky revisited this theme for younger readers a year later in his 1977 love-letter to October thirty-first, "It's Halloween" (illustrations by Marylin Hafner).
Only this time it's The Goblin holding patient vigil outside a window, and any violence it may wish to visit upon the child inside is left to our imagination. This monster only wants to play... or so it says.
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2 comments:
I recited The Ghoul in second grade, because we had to learn a poem by heart. I'm almost forty-one, and I can still recite it!
Thank you so much for posting this picture. It brought back memories of the Buhl-Henderson Public Library in Sharon, PA, where I grew up. I loved that library.
Best wishes to you!
Daphne
I still have my very own copy of Its Halloween. My name was in the cover and I had written the date my mother gave it to me.... November 13, 1978. I have read it to my 4 children hundreds of times. It may be my favorite book.
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