#91 of 1001 · October 30, 2020

There’s only one more day until Halloween, a night on which we may contemplate the primordial fears unleashed by the darkness that obscures half our waking hours. To that end, let us examine Natalie Savage Carlson and Charles Robinson’s The Night the Scarecrow Walked. A young sister and brother, out after sundown on Halloween night, stop by a cornfield to show their jack-o’-lantern to a scarecrow that the sister imagines must be lonely. Savage sets a tone of dread with ominous and expressive language: “The moon looked like the ghost of a dead planet.” Robinson creates a truly unnerving sequence of images in which the scarecrow steps down from its post, climbs over a low stone wall, and lurches toward the children. Here is an impressively tense thriller that, though it ends in safety, never fully dispels the creeping notion we all keep in the back of our minds: if you’re not careful, some still and harmless thing might come alive and shuffle toward you in the dark. #scarecrow #halloween #book #books #childrensbooks #fairytalebook #beautifulbook #beautifulbooks #beautifulbookcover #beautifulbookcovers #picturebook #picturebooks #picturebookillustration #picturebookillustrations #picturebookart #classicchildrensbooks #childrensbookillustration #childrensliterature #illustration #kidlit #kidsbooks #bookworm #booklover #booklovers #bibliophile #bookstagram #bookstagrammer #bookstagrammers #instabook #instabooks