Another year, another list of spooky Halloween picture books for kids! You know this is my favorite list of the year – more than my Christmas list and even my best of the year list. Halloween and the spooky season are just the cream of the crop for me. So I can’t wait to show off my favorites of the year.
My rules for this list are all over the place honestly. The books don’t have to be about Halloween necessarily, and they don’t have to be scary. Lots of publishers shy away from scaring kids anyway. BUT references to Halloween and actual spookiness will get you major extra credit in my book.
But every year around July/August, publishers start releasing their books for “Halloween.” Books that have monsters, books that are scary, or becomes about facing fears. In one way or another, it’s clear that they belong to the spooky season. So whether or not they feature jack-o-lanterns and trick-or-treating, they qualify for this list if it just feels right.
For my part, I do wish that publishers would take more chances on books that are legitimately scary, or on original stories with original characters that are unabashedly about Halloween. And if you’re a kindred spooky spirit, make very sure to support the work of artists who slip through the cracks in the editing offices somehow and are permitted to be weird and quirky and (could it be?) spooky.
But I’m not one to turn up my nose to anything that celebrates my favorite time of year in other ways. The books that made our spooky top 13 this year run the gamut from creepy and creative to baby’s first Halloween book, and they all make me happy. It’s that time of year folks, and I wish you a very spooky October.
Disclosure: Some of the links in this article are affiliate links that will lead you to view the books on Bookshop.org and Amazon. On Bookshop.org, your purchase can directly support a chosen independent bookstore like ours with more than 30% of the cost.
