Spook-tacular

*UPDATE* BookBairn is adoring this book even more this year! She can now interact with it better by saying what she sees under the flaps, like "cat" and "bat" and is making good attempts at saying pumpkin and skeleton too! But most definitely her favourite page has to be the scene where she lifts the toilet seat to discover a gremlin and she shouts "aahhhhh" and grins with delight! Such a great read! I highly reccomend it! Hope you like the new photos.




Halloween is nearly upon us! And our house is becoming a bit of a spooky house as I unearth the decorations usually reserved for my classroom but since this year I'm on maternity leave they are going up at home (poor Daddy BookBairn!).

We have one last Halloween book to share with you, it's spook-tacular! 'Spooky House' by Aimee Chapman, Hannah Cockayne and Amy Oliver with illustrations by Dan Crisp.

Spooky House is a ghostly journey through the many rooms of a house, which has been taken over by everything from witches to vampires to skeletons, finally concluding at Halloween party and features multiple lift-the-flaps in every scene. BookBairn loves a lift-the-flap book and I couldn't resist picking this book up for her. It has several small flaps on every page to explore revealing creepy characters and ghoulish creatures. Given the number of flaps on each page they are relatively small (in comparison to the lift-the-flap books that BookBairn is familiar with) and I worried that she might struggle to open them easily but as you can see from the photos once the flaps were loosened from the backing she has absolutely no bother flipping them back and forth. What a great way to develop her hand-eye co-ordination, which is becoming so vital to her as she learns to feed herself (she is beginning to develop that pincer grip required for picking up small pieces of food). And these smaller flaps will no doubt be helping in that development.

The illustrations in the book are spine-chillingly and hair-raisingly delightful! Whilst all of the characters are typical Halloween ghouls, they are more enchanting than bewitching! The characters are delightfully named, such as Skelly Bob, Willa the witch, Bogey Monster adding to the captivating magic of the book. There is not much of a story to the book, we simply journey through each room of the house to the party finale; however, each page treats you to a lovely rhyming couplet about the characters featured. The text is clearly beyond BookBairn at this stage but I am certain that older toddlers would love the imaginative and creative rhymes. I love that it also includes some questions and challenges readers to find things hidden under the flaps, further engaging children and also creating a conversation between the story-teller and the reader.

I was also surprised to discover that under each flap there was not only an illustration but some text on the reverse of the flap adding a little bit more information to the discovery for older readers. I particularly like the hidden bat cave and the clarification of what disgusting and despicable things Willa is cooking in the kitchen.


This book is aimed at slightly older toddlers than BookBairn (2+) but as always she has enjoyed discovering a new book, and playing with the lift-the-flaps. However, I look forward to future Halloweens where we can really sink our (vampire) teeth into this one!