Dream Entry*
March 15, 2003
It’s Halloween. My friends, three beagle puppies, a duck, and I are trick-or-treating. Most of us are dressed in butterfly costumes. Bigfoot and the duck are a pair of argyle socks. One of the beagle puppies floats overhead.
“I’m a Great Spangled Fritillary,” he says.
The first house we go to is made of straw. We stand in the front yard and shout:
“Trick-or-treat! Smell our feet!”
At the “feet part,” Bigfoot and the duck take a bow.
A snub-nosed man opens the door. He holds out a hair dryer. He turns it on. Warm air catches in our tissue paper wings and blows us to the curb. Bigfoot and the duck trip over each other and tumble into the shrubs. When the man goes back inside, we tip over all the ceramic cows in his radish garden.
The second house we visit is made of sticks. A frail old lady answers the door.
“Trick or treat!” she says before we get a chance to say it to her.
“We don’t have any treats for you,” Beverly says.
“Then a trick it shall be,” the frail old lady says.
She reaches out with her wrinkled hand to press the doorbell. A torrent of chocolate milk soaks us from above. The butterflies’ tissue paper wings dissolve. Bigfoot and the duck look more like designer dishrags than argyle socks.
The third house is made of bricks. It’s a creepy place. Ghosts look out at us from the upstairs windows. Bigfoot doesn’t want to stop, but Penny insists. On the porch is a pumpkin with a apple-scented candle lighting him from within. Next to him is a bowl of treats.
“Please take one,” the pumpkin says.
I reach into the bowl and pull out a peanut butter cookie. I put it in my treat bag.
Bigfoot takes his treat. It’s a book. He takes another and another until his bag is bulging. So do my other friends, the puppies, and the duck.
“Come on guys,” the pumpkin says. “I could lose my job over this.”
“Do you really want to be a porch pumpkin the rest of your life?” Bigfoot says.
“Actually, I’ve always wanted to be a pie.”
“Well, there you go,” Bigfoot says. “If you get fired you can be a—”
“An apple pie,” the pumpkin says dreamily. “Everybody loves apple pie.”
At that, each of the trick-or-treaters puts a book or two back into the bowl, but they still keep plenty. Even though I only took one peanut butter cookie, when I look in my bag there are dozens. I start to return a few, but I accidentally eat them instead.
We go back to the library. We all dump our treat bags on the floor in the non-fiction section so we can count our goodies. These are the Halloween treats my friends collected:
BIGFOOT’s treats:
LIFE: AN EXPLODED DIAGRAM by Mal Peet
[YOUNG ADULT]
Candlewick
October 11, 2011
NURSERY RHYME COMICS: 50 TIMELESS RHYMES FROM 50 CELEBRATED CARTOONISTS edited by Chris Duffy
[COMIC FOR VERY YOUNG READERS]
First Second-Roaring Brook
October 11, 2011
GIRLS DON’T FLY by Kristen Chandler
[YOUNG ADULT]
Viking-Penguin
October 13, 2011
DUMB LUCK by Lesley Choyce
[YOUND ADULT]
Red Deer Press
October 15, 2011
AMPLIFIED by Tara Kelly
[YOUNG ADULT]
Henry Holt
October 25, 2011
AU REVOIR, CRAZY EUROPEAN CHICK by Joe Schreiber
[YOUNG ADULT]
Houghton Mifflin
October 25, 2011
MAGGIE & OLIVER OR A BONE OF ONE’S OWN
by Valerie Hobbs, illustrated by Jennifer Thermes
[MIDDLE GRADE]
Henry Holt
October 25, 2011
STRAW HOUSE, WOOD HOUSE, BRICK HOUSE, BLOW:
FOUR NOVELLAS by Daniel Nayeri
[YOUNG ADULT]
Candlewick
October 25, 2011
MORZANT’s treats:
AROUND THE WORLD by Matt Phelan
[GRAPHIC NOVEL—NON-FICTION]
Candlewick
October 11, 2011
TREASURY OF GREEK MYTHOLOGY: CLASSIC STORIES OF
GODS, GODDESSES, HEROES & MONSTERS
by Donna Jo Napoli, illustrated by Christina Balit
[MIDDLE GRADE]
National Geographic Children’s Books
October 11, 2011
BOOKSPEAK!: POEMS ABOUT BOOKS by Laura Purdie Salas,
illustrated by Josee Bisaillon
[POETRY—PICTURE BOOK]
Clarion-Houghton Mifflin
October 25, 2011
IN SEARCH OF SASQUATCH:
AN EXERCISE IN ZOOLOGICAL EVIDENCE
by Kelly Milner Halls
[NON-FICTION—MIDDLE GRADE]
Houghton Mifflin
October 25, 2011
POEMS I WROTE WHEN NO ONE WAS LOOKING by Alan Katz, illlustrated by Edward Koren
[POETRY—MIDDLE GRADE]
Margaret K. McElderry-Simon & Schuster
October 25, 2011
PENNY’s treats:
DAVID by Mary Hoffman
[YOUNG ADULT]
Bloomsbury USA
October 11, 2011
THE SILENCE OF MURDER by Dandi Daley Mackall
[YOUNG ADULT]
Knopf-Random House
October 11, 2011
THE WATCH THAT ENDS THE NIGHT:
VOICES FROM THE TITANIC by Allan Wolf
[YOUNG ADULT]
Candlewick
October 11, 2011
BEAUTIFUL CHAOS by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl
[YOUNG ADULT—THIRD IN THE BEAUTIFUL CREATURES SERIES]
Little, Brown-Hachette
October 18, 2011
DEARLY, DEPARTED by Lia Habel
[YOUNG ADULT]
Ballantine-Del Ray-Random House
October 18, 2011
THE SCORPIO RACES by Maggie Stiefvater
[YOUNG ADULT]
Scholastic
October 18, 2011
THE CHRONICLES OF HARRIS BURDICK:
FOURTEEN AMAZING AUTHORS TELL THE TALES
illustrated by Chris Van Allsburg
[MIDDLE GRADE]
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
October 25, 2011
THE DUCKS’s treats:
THE OTHER FELIX by Keir Graff
[MIDDLE GRADE]
Roaring Brook
October 11, 2011
STEAMPUNK!: AN ANTHOLOGY OF
FANTASTICALLY RICH AND STRANGE STORIES
edited by Kelly Link and Gavin J. Grant
[YOUNG ADULT]
Candlewick
October 11, 2011
DARWEN ARKWRIGHT AND THE PEREGRINE PACT
by A.J. Hartley
[MIDDLE GRADE]
Razorbill-Penguin
October 13, 2011
TUESDAYS AT THE CASTLE by Jessica Day George
[MIDDLE GRADE]
Bloomsbury USA
October 25, 2011
NORMAN’s treats:
SECRETS AT SEA by Richard Peck,
with illustrations by Kelly Murphy
[MIDDLE GRADE]
Dial-Penguin
October 13, 2011
THE ORPHAN OF AWKWARD FALLS by Keith Graves
[MIDDLE GRADE]
Chronicle
October 19, 2011
ZOMBIE MOMMY by M.T. Anderson,
with illustrations by Kurt Cyrus
[MIDDLE GRADE—FIFTH IN THE PALS IN PERIL SERIES]
Beach Lane-Simon & Schuster
October 25, 2011
BEVERLY’s treats:
A YEAR WITHOUT AUTUMN by Liz Kessler
[MIDDLE GRADE]
Candlewick
October 11, 2011
THE MASTERWORK OF A PAINTING ELEPHANT
by Michelle Cuevas, with illustrations by Ed Young
[MIDDLE GRADE]
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
October 11, 2011
A MONTH OF SUNDAYS by Ruth White
[YOUNG ADULT]
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
October 11, 2011
MY NAME IS MINA by David Almond
[MIDDLE GRADE—PREQUEL TO SKELLIG]
Delacorte-Random House
October 11, 2011
NEVER FORGOTTEN by Patricia C. McKissack,
illustrated by Leo Dillon and Diane Dillon
[PICTURE BOOK]
Schwartz & Wade-Random House
October 11, 2011
HOW TO SAVE A LIFE by Sara Zarr
[YOUNG ADULT]
Little, Brown-Hachette
October 18, 2011
MY NAME IS NOT EASY by Debby Dahl Edwardson
[YOUNG ADULT]
Marshall Cavendish
October 28, 2011
OLIVER’s treats:
PAUL THURLBY’S ALPHABET by Paul Thurlby
[PICTURE BOOK]
Templar-Candlewick
October 11, 2011
OVER AND UNDER THE SNOW by Kate Messner
[PICTURE BOOK]
Chronicle
October 19, 2011
WILD ROSE’S WEAVING by Ginger Churchill,
illustrated by Nicole Wong
[PICTURE BOOK]
Tanglewood Press
October 18, 2011
LENNY’s treats:
SCRAWNY CAT by Phyllis Root, illustrated by Alison Friend
[PICTURE BOOK]
Candlewick
October 11, 2011
E-MERGENCY! by Tom Lichtenheld and Ezra Fields-Meyer
[PICTURE BOOK]
Chronicle
October 19, 2011
MITTENS, WHERE IS MAX? by Lola M. Schaefer,
illustrated by Susan Kathleen Hartung
[EARLY READER]
HarperCollins
October 25, 2011
VIOLET’s treats:
MUSTACHE! by Mac Barnett, illustrated by Kevin Cornell
[PICTURE BOOK]
Hyperion-Disney
October 25, 2011
PRINCESS SUPER KITTY by Antionette Portis
[PICTURE BOOK]
HarperCollins
October 18, 2011
5 comments:
Awesome list. Wow!
So glad I found your blog. Great list, thanks!
Mirka and Cherie, Which of my friends’ reading tastes do you share the most in common with?
I need to add some of these to my TBR list. Thanks!
Kelly, my psychic senses tell me I’ve got several upcoming new releases lists that you’re going to want to take note of. You’ll have a lot of reading to do! I don’t have any proof, but I think peanut butter cookies probably help a person read faster.
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