Halloween Books

I used this book to introduce the idea of Halloween to my 22 month old. He absolutley loved it! He enjoyed the door bell ringing and it helped him understand the concept of trick or treating. Sure it rhymes like a poem, but I think its perfect for toddlers! My husband and I were reading it 3 to 4 times a day when we first got it. In all honesty, we read it so much that I need to buy a new copy to share it with our new baby!

I gave this three stars because I wasn't thrilled with the content. I didn't like the rhyming and would have like more of a story. But my four year old daughter, on the other hand, loves it. Ever since we got it delivered a few days ago she wants to read it before bed, at least twice, every night. She loves the doorbell part, which I admit, is neat. You open it up (ring the bell first!) and open the book to the page and open the big flap to see who opens the door. Again, I would have liked more of a story and without the rhymes, but I do think it was a good purchase as it IS fun.

Dora is always a favorite but my daughter doesnt take interest in this. The book appears bright and colorful but inside the pages are dull.

Dora's favorite part of Halloween is dressing up in a costume. She's very excited because today is Halloween, and she and her family are having a costume party!

However, Boots can't figure out which costume to wear! He's debating between a clown, a super hero, and a baseball player. Which one will he choose for the costume party?

Dora visits her friends and helps them find items missing from their costumes. For example, Tico wants to be a cowboy...but he's missing his star badge and cowboy hat.

This story encourages children to:

*Locate missing items
*Identify squares, cirles and rectangles
*Learn Spanish words such as una fresa (strawberries) and las uvas (grapes)
*Complete a 3-color pattern
*Count to 5 in Spanish

Dora's Costume Party! is an engaging paper back book following Dora as she interacts with her friends, parents, cousin, grandmother, and baby twin siblings. This is a great non-threatening Halloween book that encourages observation, promotes friendly social interaction, and celebrates the fun of Halloween, especially donning costumes.

My son has asked me to read this book to him every night since we got it, and I'm sure other youngsters will love it, too.

I really enjoyed this book, a real who done it.It's about 2 girls with a ventriloquist act.It is creepy and funny.When the dummy starts telling secrets about Jaye's friends the trouble starts....

The book Nightmare Hall, by Diane Hoh, to me was intresting the first time I read it but the second time it became kinda drab. In a way I liked it because it was very captivating and easy to read and understand. Sometimes it was too easy to read or the actions that the author said happened would never happen.

This books falls right in line with most of the Bear in the Big Blue House products/stories. All the characters are in it, Bear makes Tutter feel better about Halloween. My girls love it (as they do all things Bear). The glow power isnt the best, you have to keep a flaslight handy and charge each page as you read, but that seems acceptable to my 2.5 year olds.

This book is great to those who love halloween like my son does. He is also a bear in the big blue house fanatic. It also has areas that glow in the dark, which my son says "is cool".

Billington is a scholar with the ability to tell a story lucidly and with a novelist's eye for what makes a book readable. He has selected colorful incidents to hightlight each section of his narrative. The geographical area covered in this book is primarily the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific Ocean. The author does travel eastward to Texas to develop the theme of overland travel and to describe historic western trails. Billington had two objectives: (1) The influence of national or world events on frontier America settlement; and (2) The relationship of Turner's Frontier Hypothesis on the customs of frontier people.

Billington generally finds support for Turner's thesis and concludes that western development was important in American history - a fact with which few would argue. He spends little time on Turner's proposition that the frontier was paramount in the evolution of the American character rather than a basic European background. Regardless, Billington has done much to resurrect Turner from the ash heap of history toward partial acceptance by the present day academic community.

This is a competent job of writing although there are annoyances that crop up throughout the book. Billington gives little attention to exploration and doesn't touch upon Indian life except as it affects that of the settlers. There is little information on early agriculture and urban development or the economic effect of the West's resources on the Eastern part of the United States. There are minor errors such as an incorrect title for Marcus Whitman and a misspelling of Henry Spaulding's name. Some debatable omissions are more serious.

The author finds little fault with the Spanish mission system in California as he recites their vast vineyards and impressive herds of livestock. Billington neglects the sordid aspects of the conversion of Native Americans to the unforgiving "labor and supply" system used by the missions. He does point out the harsh treatment by Mexicans of Indians under the notorious Ranchero system.

Billington has another blind spot with regard to the Mormon experience. He finds early day Mormon communities blameless in any dispute they may have had with neighboring gentiles. He raison d'etre for the Mormon Massacre is to cast blame upon the men, women, and children of the wagon train for their own destruction. Billington also disregards reports of ruthless actions undertaken by the Mormon hierarchy to keep back-sliding Mormons from leaving the community.

Billington's footnotes are interspersed throughout each chapter making this information easily accessible to a reader. Unfortunately, all photographs are placed in the center of the book which lessens their usefulness. Maps which relate to the text are positioned in the proper places. The bibliography, although dated, is in narrative form wherein Billington analyzes his sources. There are good and bad reasons with this method of listing source material.

The author tells his story with obvious enthusiasm. He eulogizes the pioneer spirit and applaudes various heroic personages not without justification. Any reader who is interested in the story of the acquisition of California, Oregon, Texas, and is curious about the Santa Fe trade network, gold mining, fur trading, and overland travel will find this book to his or her taste.

Frederick Jackon Turner, onetime Harvard professor and former president of the American Historical Association, was one of the most influential scholars in the field of U.S. History. His greatest contribution was the "frontier thesis," first advanced in 1893. The Turner thesis (as it is also known) stated, in brief, that "the existence of an area of free land, its continuous recession, and the advance of American settlement westward, explain American development."

This thesis has been one of the most important and lasting interpretations of American history. It has also been one of the most repudiated, challenged, and attacked theories, so it has certainly needed its defenders over the years. Turner had one defender, however, who stood head and shoulders above the rest. That was Ray Allen Billington, a noted scholar in his own right, the former curator of the Huntington Library, and one of Turner's staunchest and most tireless disciples.

In writing The Far Western Frontier (first published in 1962), Billington had two expressed purposes in mind, which he laid out in the preface. The first was to describe, in all possible detail, the movement of settlers into America's Far West, along with the events, both national and international, that influenced their migration. His second objective was "to advance evidence pertaining to the generations-old conflict over the so-called `frontier hypothesis.'" Implicit in that second purpose was Billington's desire to advance evidence in favor of the frontier hypothesis (i.e., the Turner thesis).

The Far Western Frontier tells the story of America's western migration from approximately 1830 to 1860. It is divided into twelve chapters, each telling the history of the settlement of a particular region (e.g., "the Mexican Borderlands," "The Mormons Move Westward," and "the California Gold Rush"). As part of his analysis, Billington judges the extent to which each of these settlement processes confirmed or refuted Turner's thesis. This is generally done in a subtle fashion; he seldom engages in any explicit discussion of Turner's hypothesis. However, the entire book is shot through with the very spirit of Turner. His presence lingers on every page.

As is characteristic of Billington, The Far Western Frontier is wonderfully literate, informative, and well written. The lively and eminently readable narrative is only fitting for a study of the American West-an area of history filled with great heroes, cowardly villains, and profuse myth-making. Billington, however, was not one to ignore his responsibilities as a historian in favor of the pursuit of drama. His methodology is sufficiently rigorous and objective to give much weight to his arguments. In typical Billington fashion, The Far Western Frontier is well documented (one might almost say exhaustively) and contains an extensive, if not comprehensive, bibliography.

Billington undertook a very serious take in writing this book-the rehabilitation of the Turner thesis-and he set about it in a most serious way. He brought to bear all of his considerable skills as a historian and scholar in an effort to describe and analyze the unique course of the settlement of the Far West, and to do so in a way that demonstrates the validity of the frontier thesis.

Ultimately, though, The Far Western Frontier must stand or fall according to how well Billington achieved his two stated objectives. On that basis, the book is a resounding success. It effectively recounts the movement of settlers into the Far West and the influence of world events on that migration. It also goes a long way toward not only re-examing the American West in terms of Turner's thesis, but in advancing the validity of that hypothesis.

The Far Western Frontier is a book both for the historian, and for anyone with an interest in this crucial part of American's history.

This book is good if you like spooky stories.The book is composed of 11 stories By Paul Melniczek.My favorite was The invited.Mitch and his wife are invited to a campfire by Mitch's friend Roger.Yet is he really a friend?Would a friend lock you in a mansion where a grisly murder took place?

This short story collection is original, and the stories truly give a creepy, Halloweenish feel. I especially liked the story Cinders, as it brought back fond memories of haunted hayrides and trail rides I enjoyed so much as a child. An excellent collection, and a quick, fun read.

This book actually had some nice ideas that I haven't thought of. Great pictures of every project and the directions were easy to follow. It's not too often I come across a book that has something new. I am pleased that I purchased it.

I FOUND THIS BOOK TO BE VERY USEFUL & EASY TO CONJURE UP SOME HALLOWEEN FUN. IT SHOWS STEP TO STEP INSTRUCTIONS WITH PICTURES YOU CAN FOLLOW. I ESPECIALLY ENJOYED THE PINATA, VERY EASY TO MAKE. IT RANGES FROM DECORATIONS TO FOOD & BEVERAGES. I LOVED IT, SUPER EASY.

after a few years of being into the series it was becoming too predictable and I was like what's next karen will get chicken pox oh no, and turns out I was right. Plus how many halloween's has she experienced in the whole series anyways? Karen's Ghost, Karen's Little Witch and Karen's Pumpkin Patch were all cool halloween books but this one is nothing.

This book was soooooo cool, It was so rad when Karen discovered she had Chicken pox! I may be thirteen, but I still read the Baby sitters club + little sister, by the way, more baby sitters horses series please! HORSES FOR EVER LONG LIVE HORSES, A TRULEY MAJESTIC CREATURE!

This book was not one bit scary! I suggust reading it, it's a great addation to the Karen Halloween collection!

i THOUGHT THAT THIS BOOK WAS REALLY SCARY. I DON'T THINK THAT YOU SHOULD READ IT BEFORE YOU GO TO BED BECAUSE YOU MIGHT HAVE NIGHTMARES LIKE I DID. I AM GOING TO BE 13 THIS YEAR AND I THOUGHT IT WAS REALLY SCARY SO I THINK THAT IT SHOULD BE READ BY PEOPLE AGED 20 AND OVER. AMANDA.

As in the Ugly Duckling, things do not always turn out as expected. The subtle theme that beauty of character is more important that outside appearance comes across as well in this book. The language in the book and tape is rich in rhyme. The book is useful for individuals as well as small groups.

My students learned that things aren't always what they seem: Lumpy Bumpy didn't seem like he'd be good for anything, but when the farmer saw him with Sally's hat on, he realized that Lumpy Bumpy was actually the perfect Jack O Lantern! The lesson learned? We should always try to look at things from many different angles before we judge! Everyone has a place and purpose in the world, even if it doesn't seem obvious at first. Our differences are what makes us all unique and perfect for our own special destiny.