Book Review: Trick or Treat?
This post contains gifted items. All views are our own.
We love seasonal story books. And I mean LOVE. So we were absolutely delighted to be asked to review the new Halloween picture book Trick or Treat? by Catherine Emmett, illustrated by Laura Brennla, which is published today!
The premise of the story, is a little girl out trick-or-treating on Halloween night. She’s all alone, and bravely ventures in to a deep, dark wood, to the house where a witch lives (the lengths some kids will go to for their Halloween treats, eh?)
Nobody went down the twisty, turny path.
And nobody every went into the winding, wailing wood.
And nobody ever went to the creepy, creaky house.
For in that creepy, creaky house there lived…
…a witch!
The witch can’t believe her luck, as she’s just in the middle of preparing a potion and ‘a little girl’ is one of the ingredients she is still missing. Looks like she’s the one in for a treat tonight. Or is she? All she needs to do is lure the little girl in to her cauldron. Seems simple enough, especially as the little girl seems to be a willing participant after the witch promises her a ride on her broomstick later (her parents obviously never had the stranger danger talk with her…)
Of course, things are never as straight forward as they seem – and it would have been a very short story if that was the end of it! The blurb on the back of the book hints at a twist, but despite being experienced books-with-a-twist readers, we didn’t see this one coming!
I’m not going to say anymore about the story, as I don’t want to spoil it for you and it really adds to the enjoyment when you are reading it for the first time, completely unaware. But even once you know what happens, this is a fun Halloween story you will enjoy reading again and again.
The illustrations in this book are absolutely gorgeous too. The black, greens and purples give it that spooky-October-Halloween atmosphere, with bright pops of neon orange bringing the pages alive – quite literally, it seems, with floating bright orange eyes following you throughout the story.
My youngest is 9 now, but we still enjoy pulling out our favourite seasonal picture books and certain times of the year to read together. We have collected many, many Halloween storybooks over the past ten years or so, and it gets to the point where things start repeating themselves – so I don’t say this lightly when I say Trick or Treat? was an instant fave that brought something fresh and new to our seasonal spooky story time collection.
Trick or Treat? is available from all well stocked independent booksellers, and if they don’t have it they can probably order it for you.
Disclosure: We were gifted a free copy of Trick or Treat? in return for an honest review. All opinions are our own.