#453 of 1001 · October 27, 2021

Another Halloween week book for you: A Creepy Countdown by Charlotte Huck and Jos. A. Smith. This horror-themed counting book presents one scarecrow, two toads, three jack-o-lanterns, four owls, five bats, six witches, seven ghosts, eight cats, nine skeletons, and ten mice. The groups emerge one at a time to gather for a wild display of Halloween pageantry before returning to their lairs in reverse order. Huck injects a bit of levity among the scares with her jaunty rhyming couplets, while Smith emphasizes the spectral element in his illustrations, executed in black ink on scratchboard with watercolor overlays. In a particularly clever touch, the witches fly home to a house standing on chicken legs, a reference to the iconic hut of the Russian folkloric witch Baba Yaga. #scarecrow #toad #jackolantern #owl #bat #witch #ghost #cat #skeleton #mouse #halloween #book #books #childrensbooks #beautifulbooks #picturebook #picturebooks #childrensbookillustration #illustration #kidlit #kidsbooks #bookworm #booklover #booklovers #bibliophile #bookstagram #bookstagrammer #bookstagrammers #instabook #instabooks