13 spook-tacular books to read this Halloween

What's the best part of Halloween? For us, it's curling up with pumpkin- and ghost-filled books! We rounded up some spooky, sinister and supernatural tales that are guaranteed to get you and your young reader in the Halloween spirit!

For young readers: 

  • Mary McScary by R.L. Stine, illustrated by Marc Brown
    Meet Mary McScary. Mary likes to be scary. She scares her mom, her dad, her pets, and even a balloon! Butthere's just one person Mary can't scare—her cousin, Harry McScary. He's not afraid of the usual things like spiders, snakes, and other creepy crawlies. But Mary doesn't give up that easily, and one way or another she'll find a way to give Harry the scare of his life. . . Beware of Mary McScary!
     
  • Clifford's Halloween by Norman Bridwell

     Emily, Elizabeth, and Clifford are ready for the spookiest day of the year! They make the most of their Halloween: bobbing for apples, listening to ghost stories, and trick-or-treating. But when it’s time to dress up, there are too many costumes to choose from! Zebra, witch, knight—what should Clifford be?

  • Superbat by Matt Carr

    Pat is an ordinary bat who wants nothing more than to be special. But when he proclaims himself a superbat, the other bats laugh and say that anything he can do, like fly and navigate through the dark, they can do too. Disheartened that his friends have the same superpowers as him, Pat is ready to rip off his cape and throw it away when suddenly his supersonic hearing picks up a terrified cry. A cat has trapped a poor mouse! Without a second thought, Pat quickly flies across the city using his echolocation and saves the mouse from the big, bad cat. His friends, who followed to watch, realize that Pat does have an amazing superpower: courage!

  • Five Little Pumpkins: A Finger and Toes Nursery Rhyme Book by Natalie Marshall
    Fall is in the air with this delightful twist on a pumpkin nursery rhyme just right for our Fingers & Toes collection! With bold, bright colors, picture guides to help act out the songs, and tabs throughout, this novelty board book encourages parent-child interaction while helping with dexterity, counting, and other preschool-readiness skills.

  • There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Bat by Lucille Colandro, illustrated by Jared Lee
    What won't this old lady swallow? This time around, a bat, an owl, a cat, a ghost, a goblin, some bones, and a wizard are all on the menu! This Halloween-themed twist on the classic "little old lady" books will delight and entertain all brave readers who dare to read it!

For middle grade readers:

  • Goosebumps Slappyworld series by R.L. Stine
    A brand-new Goosebumps arc narrated by the most iconic and evil character of the series, Slappy! The evil dummy comes to life to tell his own twisted tales and scary stories!
     
  • The Apprentice Witch by James Nicol

    Arianwyn has flunked her witch’s assessment: She’s doomed. Declared an apprentice and sent to the town of Lully in disgrace, she may never become a real witch—much to the glee of her arch-rival, Gimma.
    But remote Lull is not as boring as it seems. Strange things are sighted in the woods, a dangerous infestation of hex creeps through the town, and a mysterious magical visitor arrives with his eye on her.

  • Beanstalker and Other Hilarious Scarytales by Kiersten White

    Once upon a time, a bunch of fairy tales got twisted around to be completely hilarious, a tiny bit icky, and delightfully spooky scarytales... in other words, exactly what fairy tales were meant to be. Grab some flaming torches, maybe don’t accept that bowl of pease porridge, and get ready for a wickedly fun ride with acclaimed author Kiersten White and fairy tales like you’ve never heard them before.

  • Graveyard Shakes by Laura Terry

     Katia and Victoria are sisters and scholarship students at a private boarding school. While Victoria tries to fit in, Katia is unapologetic about her quirks, even though their classmates tease her. After a big fight, Katia runs away from school. And when Victoria goes looking for her, she accidentally tumbles into the underworld of a nearby graveyard. It is inhabited by ghosts, ghouls, and a man named Nikola, who is preparing a sinister spell that’s missing one key ingredient.

  • Shadow House Book 3: No Way Out by Dan Poblocki

    The third installment in the exciting Shadow House series that invites you to step inside the ghost story!
    Poppy, Dash, Azumi, and Dylan may have made it out of Shadow House—but the grounds are a whole new nightmare. Someone they thought was a friend is hunting them, and there’s no place that's safe now that they’ve woken the shadow creature. If they want to survive, they'll have to figure out once and for all what the house wants from them, and what-or who-they’ll need to leave behind in order to escape… or risk being trapped within Shadow House forever.

  • The Witch Boy by Molly Knox Ostertag

    In thirteen year-old Aster’s family, all the girls are raised to be witches, while all boys grow up to be shapeshifters. Anyone who dares to cross these lines is exiled. Unfortunately for Aster, he still hasn’t shifted… and he’s still fascinated by witchery, no matter how forbidden it may be.
    When a mysterious danger threatens the other boys, Aster knows he can help—as a witch. It will take the encouragement of a new friend, the non-magical and non-conforming Charlie, to convince Aster to try practicing his skills. And it will require even more courage to save his family… and be truly himself.

For young adults: 

  • Five Nights at Freddy's Book 2: The Twisted Ones by Scott Cawthon and Kira Breed-Wrisley

    It’s been a year since the horrific events at Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza, and Charlie is just trying to move on. Even with the excitement of a new school and a fresh start, she’s still haunted by nightmares of a masked murderer and four gruesome animatronic puppets. Charlie thinks her ordeal is over, but when a series of bodies are discovered near her school bearing wounds that are disturbingly familiar she finds herself drawn back into the world of her father’s frightening creations. Something twisted is hunting Charlie, and this time if it finds her, it’s not letting her go.

  • The Wrong Train by Jeremy De Quidt

     Light the candles and shut the door, The Wrong Train is a deliciously creepy and scarily good collection of scary stories, complete with terrifying illustrations from Dave Shelton. Perfect for fans of Patrick Ness, R.L. Stine, and Emily Carroll.

 

Scholastic continues supporting educators affected by recent hurricanes

All of us at Scholastic are sending support and well wishes to the educators, children, and families affected by the recent hurricanes. As noted by our first response to the hurricanes, we are deeply committed to helping educators replace the books and instructional materials needed to help students return to a sense of normalcy and continue to learn and grow. 

We’ve established a dedicated site, scholastic.com/hurricanerelief, for superintendents and administrators seeking help, which will be updated as needed. In addition, to immediately help teachers with resources to resume instruction, Scholastic Classroom Magazines will make digital editions of 20 prek-grade 12 classroom magazines available through December 31, 2017. If you’re an educator interested in this access, please click here. 

Bring your family to the National Book Festival!

The 2017 Library of Congress National Book Festival is happening this weekend, and it's truly a wonderful event for readers and families of all ages. We're thrilled that, once again, Scholastic has lots to offer visitors at our booth in the Washington Convention Center. Come stop by! 

In the Scholastic booth you'll find tons of activities, giveaways and even poetry performances from the award-winning National Student Poets! You can also pose for photos with Clifford the Big Red Dog, Captain Underpants, and Dog Man. Plus, at the top of every hour from 9am to 7pm, we'll be hosting read-alouds. It's the perfect place to come have a rest and be entertained with great books! 

Of course, our Scholastic authors will be there too, hosting readings and book signings. Check out the schedule:

Children's Purple Stage

Children's Green Stage

Teens and Main Stage

 

Follow the fun on Twitter at #NatBookFest, and find the complete lineup of authors here. 

8 family listens for a novel Labor Day weekend

Long weekends are rare, precious things. Whether you’re the type of person who counts down to them with big Xs on calendars, or the type who lets them roll in by surprise like free cans of soda from vending machines, these weekends are Made. To. Savor.

This Labor Day weekend, season your hours with some sonics, aka audiobooks! From staycations to road-trips, audiobooks are one of the easiest and most popular ways to devour exciting stories while keeping your entire family entertained for hours.   

Tune into these stories for a novel Labor Day weekend:

1) THE APPRENTICE WITCH

For families who love fantasies!

This enchanting and spell-binding listen about magic and grit in a world of witches will keep everyone hooked for hours. Perfect for fans of Harry Potter, Circus Mirandus and The Apothecary. Bonus tidbit: the narrator, Elizabeth Knowelden, is British! (Ages 8 – 12 |Audiobook length: 7 hrs and 33 mins)

(2) REFUGEE

For fans of historical fiction and stories of survival.  

A tour de force from acclaimed author Alan Gratz, this New York Times bestselling novel shares the timely and powerful story of three different children seeking refuge. It’s an action-packed story that’ll keep the entire family at the edge of their seats. (Ages 8 – 12 |Audiobook length: 7 hrs and 36 mins) 

(3) BOW WOW: A BOWSER AND BIRDIE NOVEL

For everyone in the mood for a ruff mystery…

Birdie Gaux, a sharp-eyed girl detective, and Bowser, her handsome dog, dive into a new mystery about a bull shark in the swamp. Young animal lovers will love listening to the escapades of this dynamic duo from bestselling author Spencer Quinn. (Ages 8 – 12 |Audiobook length: 6 hrs and 23 mins)

(4) DIRT

For folks who like animals and friendship stories.

A young girl and her stubborn, silly pony will win your heart (and ears) in DIRT. It’s a story that will make you worry, make you cry, and ultimately fill you with hope, love, and an unshakable belief in the power of friendship. Especially the four-legged kind. (Ages 8 – 12 |Audiobook length: 5 hrs and 7 mins)

5) THE LOTTERYS PLUS ONE

For listeners looking for a multi-cultural listen.

Featuring 7 kids, 4 parents, 5 pets, and 1 grumpy grandpa, listeners won’t forget this vibrant story that’s a cross between Little Miss Sunshine, Cheaper by the Dozen, and Modern Family. It’s also the first children’s book from Emma Donoghue, the best-selling author of the adult novel ROOM. (Ages 8 – 12 |Audiobook length: 6 hrs and 35 mins) 

(6) THE HARLEM CHARADE

For those looking to explore a new neighborhood.

In this fast-paced story, three kids from Harlem join forces to solve a crime and save their neighborhood. Great for fans of CHASING VERMEER and those looking for a clever new mystery to keep them on their toes. (Ages 8 – 12 |Audiobook length: 6 hrs and 49 mins) 

(7) DARKNESS OF DRAGONS (WINGS OF FIRE #10)

For WINGS OF FIRE fans looking for a new way to experience the stories!

Something is coming to shake the earth. Something is coming to scorch the ground. Young fans of this New York Timesbest-selling series will love hearing this epic dragon story, the latest from author and mastermind Tui T. Sutherland. (Ages 8 – 12 |Audiobook length: 10 hrs and 26 mins)

 

(8) HORIZON (#1)

For readers who love stories about sci-fi, survival, and exploring new frontiers.  

When a plane crash-lands in the Arctic, eight young survivors step from the wreckage expecting to see nothing but ice and snow. Instead they find themselves lost in a strange jungle with no way to get home and little hope of rescue. With danger at every turn, they must learn to work together to survive. This is the first story in a new series from the visionary mind ofNew York Times best-selling author Scott Westerfeld. (Ages 9 – 12 |Audiobook length: 5 hrs and 53 mins) 

 

Have a super-sonic weekend,

Vaishali Nayak

Scholastic Trade Marketing

Celebrating August 29th book releases from Scholastic!

Today on OOM we’re celebrating some book birthdays for new releases from Scholastic, out today! Check out the list below of great reads for all ages, and let us know what you’re most excited to read. 

 Little Ones (Ages 3 and under) 

 Picture Books (Ages 4–8) 

 Young Readers (5–10) 

 Middle Grade (Ages 8–12) 

Young Adult (Ages 12 and up) 

 

Hard work, essential questions, and response journals: items from my teacher toolbox

Reflecting on my experience as a teacher, I am trying to imagine what I would do if I was returning to the classroom this month, in the middle of a natural disaster and a turbulent news cycle.

  • What is my essential question for the year?
  • What is the first thing my students will ‘read’?
  • What is the first thing my students will ‘write’?

But a ‘what would I do?’ is so hard to pin down, because it’s all conjecture. Instead I am dragging my metaphorical teacher toolbox out of the dusty corner it occupies in my garage (brain) and rummaging through it for what I did do, because it worked.  

Rewind a decade; I was a high school English teacher, and my Social Studies colleague – Marie Julienne – and I puzzled this out together. In fact, we spent an entire summer planning an integrated tenth grade humanities curriculum and our first to-do was to develop an essential question, the foundation for a year of inquiry that would culminate in National History Day projects. Jeffrey D. Wilhelm explains in Teacher magazine,

“An essential question frames a unit of study as a problem to be solved. It should connect students’ lived experiences and interests (their only resources for learning something new) to disciplinary problems in the world. And it should connect what they learn back to the real world, where they can put their new understandings to work.”

After much coffee, pie, and discussion at the Flying Star in downtown Albuquerque:

  • Essential question – To what extent is man’s inhumanity to man justified?
  • First ‘reading’ – War, by Bob Marley
  • First ‘writing’ – Response journal entry, reflecting on the War lyrics

On the first day of school, we gathered the entire 10th grade together in my classroom and played the song LOUDLY on my boom box. And then we played it again. After the second listen, we asked for silence and our students wrote in their response journals for ten minutes. In an order I can’t remember, we followed that with introducing the essential question for the year, handing out syllabi, and explaining how we would be using response journals to guide our curriculum.

Black and white composition notebooks, these journals were essential to our pedagogy. In fact, I still have one (well two, one per semester) that one of our kids let me keep. It is on my bookshelf at home, precious because it captures some of my best work, as a teacher. The students pasted readings on the left and responded to them on the right, making text-to-text, text-to-world and text-to-self connections. On Fridays Marie and I collected the response journals and split them between us to read the next day. Although we had a plan for the year, and for each semester, and for each quarter, we refined our curriculum and made final decisions together about lessons for the upcoming week, on Sunday afternoons, over coffee, while sharing our observations from the response journals.

We responded to every kid in the back of their notebook – one compliment, one critique, one suggestion, and one sticker. We debated how to adapt to the texts, to the things going on in the world, and to what we learned about our students’ lives. We compromised. We wrote lessons. We graded stuff. We made each other better teachers.

And on more Sundays than I can count, we closed down the Flying Star café.

So what would I do – now? Three recommendations:

  1. Develop an essential question for the year, or at least for the fall. Post it in the classroom. Talk about it on the first day. Point at it, wherever you posted it, when the teachable moment is right. Be ready – as you know, you can’t plan teachable moments. They just happen.
  2. Plan for the year and outline the curriculum as needed, but be responsive. Connections help students retain new knowledge, so when there is an opportunity to connect curriculum to a new development in popular culture, the news cycle, and students’ lives, take it. Like teachable moments, you can’t plan for these. Life happens.
  3. Collaborate with a colleague to create opportunities for connections between subjects. You don’t have to go as hard as Marie and I did, but I would recommend it. It’s like how I go faster (and don’t stop nearly as much) when I am running with someone as opposed to when I run by myself. It is nice to have somebody to problem solve with. Make this happen.

I am tempted to end this post wishing you “good luck” for the year, but, instead, I will end with the phrase that my father and uncle have their basketball players yell, at the end of a time out, when everyone puts their hands in, before going back out on the court.

Put your hand ‘in’… lay it on the screen, maybe hit the share button, and say it with me:

HARD WORK!!

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