My kids and I love Halloween. My daughter loves it so much that the staff of the Moran Prairie Library joked with me last week about her habit of checking out Halloween-themed books year-round. The fun, inviting spookiness of the holiday is a playground for the imaginative. And Halloween night, itself, is such a lively way to embrace the lengthening darkness and to enjoy our neighbors and communities. It’s no surprise my daughter loves reading about it, even in the middle of spring and summer.

As usual, we’ve been checking out a lot of Halloween picture books. Here’s a selection of our favorites, some new and some classic:

A Tiger Called Tomás by Charlotte Zolotov and Marta Álvarez Miguéns (Sourcebooks Jaberwocky). This is a Latinx retelling of a classic. Tomás is a “very nice boy” who is nervous about meeting his new neighbors. His mother encourages him, but he shies away, worried that people won’t like him. When Halloween arrives, Tomás dons the mask of a tigre to give him the courage to venture into the neighborhood. The resulting interactions make him feel maravilloso (wonderful). Beautifully illustrated, this is a gorgeous book filled with kindness and community and adorable Halloween costumes.

Pumpkin Trouble by Jan Thomas (Harper Collins). Jan Thomas’s books are known for their clean lines, bright colors, and wacky humor. In this funny, gentle book, a duck gets overly excited while carving a pumpkin and gets his head stuck inside of it. Now there’s a pumpkin with duck feet running around the barnyard! This is a great read for the younger set, delightful but not at all scary.

Stumpkin by Lucy Ruth Cummins (Simon and Schuster). Empathetic children will love this sweet story about a pumpkin with no stem and his fervent wish to become a jack-o-lantern on Halloween. Will anyone ever choose poor stemless Stumpkin to display in their apartment window? This affectionate story will definitely get your kiddos excited for pumpkin-carving season.

Creepy Pair of Underwear by Aaron Reynolds and Peter Brown (Simon and Schuster). Underpants are always funny to children (and to me, admittedly), and this spooky tale will make children laugh even as they relate to the little bunny’s determination to be a big bunny. His first big-bunny triumph? Owning a pair of creepy underpants, of course! This is a laugh-out-loud tale my kids request again and again.

Heckedy Peg by Audrey Wood and Don Wood (HMH). A mother gives her children three simple warnings as she leaves the house, but the children don’t follow her instructions. The witch Heckedy Peg takes advantage of their mistake and turns them into delicious foods. Fortunately the mother comes to their rescue, and her cunning and love for her children save the day. This is the quintessential witch story in our household, a book I ended up buying from Auntie’s Bookstore so we could have our own copy handy.

Ghosts in the House! By Kazuno Kohara (Square Fish). An empowered girl moves into a new house with her cat to find it overtaken by ghosts … but she doesn’t mind, because she’s a witch! The illustrations in this are lovely, and the girl’s repurposing of the ghosts inspires creative thinking and bravery in young kids. Definitely a Halloween must.

In a Dark, Dark Room by Alvin Schwartz and Dirk Zimmer (Harper Collins). You know the tales in this are great when they inspire incredible literary masterpieces like Carmen Maria Machado’s Her Body and Other Parties (Graywolf Press). This is a classic you no doubt read as a child, and I promise you your kids will find it just as enthralling and scary as you did. Definitely not a read for toddlers, I’d recommend this more for brave 5-8 year olds, although frankly I still delight in reading them at age forty.

Have a fun October reading spooky books to your loved ones. If you need one for yourself, I recommend Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House. This is the book Stephen King once called “one of the most important horror novels of the twentieth century,” and it’s perhaps the most psychologically chilling tale I’ve ever read. Happy scary reading! 

Sharma Shields, born and raised in Spokane, is the author of Favorite Monster: Stories and The Sasquatch Hunter’s Almanac: A Novel. She lives on the South Hill with her husband and two children.