I think this book is fun for primary students. It is a story about kids trying to scare their grandpa, but it doesn't work, and they wonder why. he then tells them the story of when he did get scared back when he was a kid, but we learn it wasn't a real story it was just a play to scare the kids back.

To be honest, this book freaked me out a bit. However, I think there are some kids that would like it.This book is about an old grandpa who tells his grandchildren about a terrible Halloween that happened when he was a kid. I wouldn't read it as a read aloud, but the reading level is still appropriate for the K-2 age range.

The story starts off with two siblings who are excited for Halloween. They want to scare their grandpa, but unfortunately he does not scare easily. He recalls a terrible Halloween night and tells the children what happened after they plead for him to. The grandpa tells a story of when he went trick-or-treating and came to a scary house where there were scary things like spiders and giant pumpkins, floors covered in frogs, and even an animal that was made up of all bad things. It ends with the grandpa leaving the house through a purple striped door and when he entered the door he became very old and has been that old ever since. The children want to know what happened behind the door, but the grandfather refuses. Overall, I liked this story because I like the idea of the scary story. I have been told many scary stories in my life. I think the children in the book enjoyed it and I think readers that read this during Halloween will also enjoy it. The illustrations in the book were interesting because they all had the same border. It looked like a pencil drawn border around each picture. I thought that was a neat way to give the pictures a frame. It also reminded me of a comic book because each frame had a border and there were multiple frames per page. I didn’t like that the illustrations did not take up the whole page. I think it would have been scarier if the author made the pictures full page when the grandpa was inside the scary house. For example, when the pumpkin was trying to capture the grandpa, I think it would have been better to have the vines all over the page and trying to get him. Overall, I thought this was a good book, but would not recommend it to young children who are frightened easily. I think the overall message is to not go somewhere without your parents, especially on Halloween. I think this would be a good story to teach children that if you are a parent. The main idea could also be to not always believe the stories your grandparents tell you because some of them could be silly and made up from imagination. There are many ideas or messages one could take from this story, but those are the two that I thought were most present. ( )

Genre: Realistic fiction
Age Appropriateness: Primary
Review: This picture book is a great example of realistic fiction. It is the story of a Grandfather telling his grandchildren a scary story on halloween night. Children will enjoy being scared and can relate to listening to scary stories. The main character, the Grandpa, is flat and dynamic about him. We don't know anything about him when he was little, but during the story he tells he is transformed from a boy into an old man. Very dynamic!!

Media: Pencil and watercolors ( )