There Was an Old Witch

In this cumulative verse, an old witch collects a bat, a scratching scritching cat, a howling yowling creature, and other creepy crawly things to adorn her Halloween hat.

Kindergarten-Grade 1-Instead of an "Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly," this Halloween story features an old witch who wants a bat. In the course of her search for the nocturnal animal, she captures a cat, creates a creature, unearths a mummy, assembles a skeleton, and conjures a haunt. At the somewhat anticlimactic ending, readers discover why she wants the bat-for "Nothing more/than to adorn/her Halloween hat!" A lively refrain invites participation: "I know why/she wanted the bat./But I won't tell you that." The watercolor and pen-and-ink pictures are more fun than fierce and include a lot of color and humor, but the crowded design of many of the pages, as well as the illustrator's style of showing partial figures, make the book problematic for group use. A holiday extra that's best suited to one-on-one sharing.
Lucinda Snyder Whitehurst, St. Christopher's School, Richmond, VA
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.