Scary, Scary Halloween by Eve Bunting, pictures by Jan Brett, 1986.

I love the pictures in this book and enjoy the rhyming text of the story.  It’s a cute concept for Halloween, and young children will enjoy the repetition in the story.

One Halloween night, unseen watchers observe children in costume trick-or-treating.  The mother cautions her children to remain hidden because of all the strange creatures that are out and about on Halloween.

Readers will know that the monsters are simply children in costume, but the watchers do not because they are cats, which is only revealed at the end of the story.  Throughout most of the book, they only appear as green eyes as they hide under the porch of a house.

When all the trick-or-treaters are gone, the mother cat and her kittens are free to roam the night themselves.

I thought that it was cute how the mysterious tone of the book was due to the cats’ understanding of Halloween.  At first, it may seem very mysterious to young children as well, but completely understandable as it becomes more and more obvious that all the monsters are only trick-or-treaters and the little family hiding from them are cats, who think of themselves as being pretty fierce in their own right.

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive.