The Bones of Fred McFee

Told in rhythmic rhyme, this spooky Halloween tale relates how the young-boy narrator and his sister bring home a plastic skeleton and hang it in their sycamore tree, as a holiday decoration. They soon begin to notice, however, that the bones of Fred McFee (as the skeleton is soon named) have an odd effect on their animal companions, scaring them away from the tree. Then, the morning after Halloween, they discover that the skeleton has vanished...

Having read quite a few eerie tales from author Eve Bunting - The Banshee, Scary, Scary Halloween, Ghost's Hour, Spook's Hour - I fully expected to enjoy some delicious thrills while perusing The Bones of Fred McFee, and I was not disappointed! From the opening page - "There's a skeleton high show more in our sycamore tree, / High as high can be. / He was hung up there by my sister and me, / High in our sycamore tree" - the rhyming text here builds the sense of suspense and feeling of dread quite nicely. The accompanying artwork by Kurt Cyrus, created using scratchboard and watercolor, perfectly complement the text, and adds to the chilling sense of unease. Recommended to anyone lookinf for delightfully creepy Halloween fare for the picture-book set. show less

"Are skeletons real? I'm afraid of skeletons, Mom." When my youngest son was five he was really excited about Halloween...except for one thing...skeletons. He really thought skeletons were very scary. When he was alone in the darkness of his room at bedtime the bogeyman under the bed most often took the shape of a skeleton. It took a junior high school science text and some serious 'splainin' on my part but we eventually put those spooky skeletons into perspective. I told him everybody has a skeleton and without them we wouldn't be able to move and we'd be like big lumpy, bumpy blobs of Jell-o. I told him to make his skeleton dance with my skeleton and picture how the bones move. We did some silly wiggling around and laughing. "My show more skeleton can hop." "Mine can do the twist." I assured him that skeletons are awesome, important parts of human beings but they can't do anything all by themselves. "It's impossible. Right?" "Right!" We got a cardboard skeleton with brads at the joints that allowed the arms and legs to move and we hung him on our front door. That was the end of skeleton phobia at our house.

It depends on how much drama you add with your voice and sound effects when you read the story aloud but The Bones of Fred McFee just might bring skeleton phobia to your home. Most kids will love this book but it might not be for very little ones. Even though the text is pretty simple, the story has a spooky mysterious flavor to it. The publishers say it is intended for the 4-8 year old listeners but I think you will really have to judge the appropriateness based on your own child's development and sensitivity and imagination. It's a simple story but there are some implications that can leave a creepy, "what if" feeling in their wake. Some kids will love that and some will get skeleton phobia!

The Bones of Fred McFee is filled with exciting Halloween imagery and the rhyming words of the text, for the most part, flow well, helping the story build to a ghostly ending that leaves children to wonder about those things that "go bump in the night."

A brother and sister get a realistic-looking plastic skeleton at the fair and they hang it up in their large old sycamore tree for Halloween decoration. Their imaginations begin to run wild...or is it their imaginations? They have named their skeleton Fred McFee and they suspect that he may be doing more than just his dance of the dead. Why does the old dog, Sam, stay away from the tree where the skeleton is hanging? Why have the hens stopped laying and where has the old rooster gone? A single teal-colored feather looking suspiciously like one from the rooster's tail is seen sticking up, lodged in the hinge of the skeleton's jaw.

The kids hear a clickety-clacking sound of his rattling bones and they are afraid to look out of the window. What might they see?! The wind whips through the tree branches and Fred McFee dances faster. Some of the rhymes are a little forced but most add nicely to the atmosphere.

"The dark is dropping like a cowl__
There's no star to be seen.
What's wrong with Sam? We hear him howl,
This night of Halloween."

After one particularly windy night Fred McFee himself disappears! Where he went, no one knows for certain. The kids think that maybe that bare spot of ground under the sycamore is his grave! Their imaginations really take off. Maybe he's even there now, waiting, waiting for a dark windy night for lurking in the shadows and dancing his ghoulish dance. When the wind is blowing in the dark and the tree branches are clacking together, Shhhh!....Is that Fred McFee?!

I love this book and I think it can be a lot of fun for kids if you make sure that they understand that skeletons aren't really able to dance on their own. Author Eve Bunting has a long, long string of excellent children's books to her credit and she has put in lots of atmosphere that is very accessible to children and will almost give them the sense of being in the story themselves. The child characters in the book seem like real children and kids will relate to them readily.

The illustrations are fantastic and are the best part of the book. Almost all of the illustrations are large double page spreads with from one to four lines of text. Every page is illustrated. Artist Kurt Cyrus used scratchboard and watercolor so the illustrations have a nice dark "crayon resist" look that offers up mysterious shadows and textures that like moonlit darkness spark the imagination and cause us to second-think the evidence of the eye.

Even though the children in the book manage to convince themselves that Fred McFee's skeleton really came to life and the story leaves kids wondering, the very last page of the book has a picture of the moon high in the bare branches of the sycamore and the way the crooked branches look against the moon will make it easy for a parent to put things back into perspective if childish imaginations get too wound up.

I like the idea of a children's ghost story that leaves plenty to the imagination without copping out. A spooky little shiver up the spine can be fun for kids. I read this at a Halloween slumber party on my goddess-daughter's 8th Halloween birthday and it was a hit...although the stiff as a board, light as a feather game was a bigger hit. Eyeballs in the punch, an icing spiderweb and black plastic spiders on the cake and realistic-looking rubber cockroaches on top of the sandwiches went over pretty well, too. A Halloween CD had them shaking their skeletons to The Monster Mash and nobody lost any sleep over Fred McFee that night. show less

"The Bones of Fred Mcfee" starts with a brother and sister buying a plastic skeleton from the harvest fair and naming it Fred Mcfee. Many things are changing since they hang the skeleton in their sycamore tree and everyone and everything is acting strange. Their dog howls on Halloween night and the next day the skeleton is vanished from the tree and is buried right under the tree. The kids don't know who or what could have done this and it remains a mystery. Eve Bunting uses rhyming in this book to paint a picture of all the scary things happening. This would be a great book for a read aloud because you are able to change the tone of your voice when reading different pages. There are also many small details that you may miss seeing the show more first time you read like the rotting pumpkins and the dog acting weird that may help you predict what will happen next. Overall this would be a great book to introduce in the month of October. show less

The Bones of Fred McFee is a perfect book to get children into the spirit of Halloween. However, I don't recommend this book for children younger than five. The story follows a sister and brother who brought a skeleton home from the harvest fair. When they hang the skeleton on their sycamore tree, unexplainable things begin to happen, such as the hens no longer lay eggs. Then suddenly, the skeleton mysteriously disappears. Overall, the book has an interesting rhyme pattern and beautiful illustrations that will pique your curiousity.

Mixed feelings on this one. I liked the rhyming text and the spooky tone to the story that could draw in older kids. There was something about the premise that didn't sit with me right and just ended up coming off as creepy versus enjoyably scary.

The creepy fun begins when a brother and sister bring home a plastic skeleton from the harvest fair. High up in a sycamore tree, the skeleton dances with glee. The plastic bones of Fred McFee click and clack in the wind. Once Halloween is over, the bones will be put away until next year, but where are they? The children search and search; there’s nothing to be found but a grave beneath the tree. What could have happened? Where did Fred McFee go? He’s gone! Or is he? Check out this spooktactular tale for a frightfully good scare.

The Bottom Line: This is a spooky tale for kids ages 5 - 8. The rhythmic story is great for reading aloud, and the colorful illustrations in scratchboard and watercolor add to the creepy fun. Highly show more recommended Halloween reading, but keep your little ones close because this tale might be a bit scary for some tiny tots.

This review also appears at the Mini Book Bytes Book Review Blog. show less

37 months - We are currently reading a bunch of Halloween books (yes I know it's June). O grabbed this off the shelf at the library. What a fabulous story. The illustrations are amazing, the story has a great rhythm to it and we are left wondering what happened, who and why. A great spooky tale. Love and might just have to track down a copy for our Halloween collection.

39 months - In preparation for Autumn bought a copy. :)