Halloween Gift & Reading Guide Part 2
I’m back with a few more Halloween recommendations to bring the spooky season to a close. I hope you have been having fun carving pumpkins and bundling up against the cooler weather here in Ireland. We have big plans to carve some pumpkins and get our costumes sorted next week. And hopefully, I will be able to dive into some spooky books. Enjoy!
Children’s Books
There’s a Ghost in This House by Oliver Jeffers
I was so excited when this book arrived! We are big fans of Oliver Jeffers, an artist and author-illustrator from Belfast, whose collection of award-winning and bestselling picture books have been translated all over the globe. This is one of the most unique children’s books I’ve seen in a while and uses tracing paper to make the silly ghosts appear on each page. and I highly recommend it for the littles in your life for some spooky Halloween fun.
There’s a Ghost in This House is captivating with interactive, transparent pages about a girl who lives in a haunted house, but she has never seen a ghost. Are they white with holes for eyes? Are they hard to see? Step inside and help the girl as she searches under the stairs, behind the sofa, and in the attic for the ghost. Perfect for Halloween!
A Spooktacular Place to Be by Una Woods
In the first part of our Halloween reading and gift guide I mentioned Have You Seen the Dublin Vampire by Una Woods, one of our family’s favorite Halloween children’s books. I’m so happy that we will be stocking Wood’s new book featuring the friendly Dublin Vampire, A Spooktacular Place to Be.
The Dublin Vampire is headed on a spooky bus tour of Ireland. He travels to well-known places all over the country, including St. Michan's church (where the mummies sleep!), Kilkenny Castle, the Hill of Tara, and visits the giants at the causeway. But, when his travels are done, he decides that home is the most spooktacular place to be! A perfect read to get into the Halloween spirit.
Coming Soon!
Fiction
Scenes of a Graphic Nature by Caroline O’Donoghue
On the surface, this might not seem like a spooky read, but trust me when I say that it has all the elements to keep you gripped and turning pages into the night. After a tough few years floundering around the British film industry, experimenting with amateur pornography and watching her father's health rapidly decline, Charlie and her best friend Laura journey to her ancestral home of Clipim, an island off the west coast of Ireland.
She knows this could be the last chance to connect with her dad's history before she loses him. But when the girls arrive, Charlie begins to question both her difficult relationship with Laura and her father's childhood stories. Before long, she's embroiled in a devastating conspiracy that's been sixty years in the making.
I sometimes think the scariest stories are the ones that burn slowly and that mirror the small horrors of everyday life. Charlie learns things on Clipim that shake the core of her reality; I can’t think of anything more terrifying than that.
Bright Things Burning by Rachel Donohue
Foresight is not always a gift...
The summer Natasha Rothwell turns fifteen, strange dancing lights appear in the sky above her small town, lights that she interprets as portents of doom.
Natasha leads a sheltered life with her beautiful, bohemian mother in a crumbling house by the sea. As news of the lights spreads, more and more visitors arrive in the town, creating a feverish atmosphere of anticipation and dread. And the arrival of a new lodger, the handsome Mr Bowen, threatens to upset the delicate equilibrium between mother and daughter.
Then Natasha's fears seem to be realized when a local teenager goes missing, and she is called on to help.
But her actions over that long, hot summer will have unforeseen and ultimately tragic consequences that will cast a shadow for many years to come...