In the Haunted House

Prolific children's author Eve Bunting, whose Scary, Scary Halloween offered a delightfully spooky holiday poem, delivers another rhyming picture-book thriller with In the Haunted House. "This is the house where the scary ones hide. / Open the door and step softly inside. / An organ is playing a funeral air. / It's playing and playing, but nobody's there." And so begins the tour of the haunted house, with creepy attractions - from peeping mummies to seraphically smiling vampires - galore! The artwork depicts two sets of feet coming and going throughout the tale, and at the end it is revealed just who these feet belong to - and which one, of the two, was most frightened.

With an engaging text just made for reading aloud, and appealing show more illustrations by Susan Meddaugh - of Martha fame - In the Haunted House would make an excellent Halloween story-hour selection. The ending, in which it turns out that it was the father who was most frightened by the experience, while his young daughter is eager to sample the delights of the house again, will tickle young readers' funny bones, with its reversal of traditional roles. All in all, a sweet little Halloween tale, one recommended to young readers with a taste for spooky (but not too spooky) fare! show less

I enjoyed this book for a few different reasons. First, I enjoyed the flaps occurring on each page with an image under it because it allow the reader to be curious about what illustration is going to pop up behind the flaps. For example, behind the flap with the door is a mummy in a bed. This is interesting because it has the reader question what they think is about to happen in the story. Next, I thought the rhyming throughout the story was critical because it can help the reader learn the different word families. For example, the words hide and inside on the first page. They would be grouped in the same family because they both end in ide. The main idea of the story is showing scary features of what actually occurs in a haunted house.

I wish I could have toured such a haunted house when I was a girl. The illustrations don't just give nice visuals, they contain clues in the details. I particularly enjoyed the vampire and the bats. The odd picture over the big box was interesting. (The werewolf should either get a bigger shirt or make sure those buttons are sewed on very securely.) The next-to-last page is the funniest. Kids should enjoy the visit to this special house.

Eve Bunting's "In the Haunted House" starts with two people entering a house, one wearing a small shoe and one wearing a bigger shoe, which is a mystery because you want to know who they are. The author puts you in the spirit of Halloween making you think something spooky will happen. The organ is playing by itself so you automatically think you are in a haunted house and it keeps the reader on the edge of their seat thinking something will happen soon. At the end of the book if you look close you can see the record player next to the organ and its all making sense now. When scary things happen people tend to stay together. We learn that a daughter and her father are leaving a haunted house at the end of the book and the dad was show more actually more scared than the little girl. The line is now long out of the front of the haunted house and now we can tell it was a commercial haunted house the entire time. Size does not determine courage. Eve Bunting rhymes her words about the scary haunted house and makes it easy to follow the movement of the words. Young readers wont be so scared about going into haunted house after reading this books that pairs scary with funny. show less

All of the spooky things that lurk in a scary house are described at the beginning by a little girl. The reader thinks the house is really haunted until the girl steps outside and says "Halloween houses are so much fun!" This tells readers that it was a pretend haunted house and that the creatures must have been people dressed up in costumes.

There is a house were everything is scary as soon as you step into it. There are organs playing when no one is there, witches, and ghosts everywhere. As they go through the house there still more scary things to come like werewolves, vampires, and Frankenstein too. As they run out of the house back to a sunny day the father and daughter seem relieved to be out of the Halloween house, but go back inside again. I really liked this book especially when Halloween is almost here. Really like this book and I thought it was really cute because it seem like the father was more afraid of the Halloween house than the daughter.

This is a cute rhyming story! Fun illustrations too. I am a sucker for a haunted house.