🇬🇧 Spooky Street
🇺🇸 Halloween Street

Spooky Street (published as Halloween Street in the US) is the third in the series of Alphabet Street books that I’ve created with Ingela P Arrhenius and Nosy Crow. After the second book, Christmas Street, proved popular, continuing the series with a Halloween-themed book seemed like a natural next step.

I knew that there would be a US edition of the book and was aware that modern Halloween traditions in the US differ slightly from those in the UK, with some US trick or treaters and partygoers dressing up as non-spooky characters such as pirates and princesses. Some of the characters in Ingela’s illustrations can be seen dressed in costumes like these, but I wanted the book’s rhyming alphabet, and the under-the-flap illustrations that accompany it, to be drawn from the more traditional, spooky, witches, ghosts and monsters side of Halloween. Achieving this while keeping the book’s content suitable for pre-schoolers proved tricky in some instances and Ingela drew several versions of the “Z is for ZOMBIE,” image before arriving at finished illustration that struck the right balance. 

One of the features of the original Alphabet Street book that I’m particularly proud of is the alphabetised names of the ground floor shops (Alfie’s Bakery, Coffee & Doughnuts, etc.) that match the letters under the flaps on each page. I’d tried to do the same thing for Christmas Street but was unable to come up with a list of Christmas-themed alphabetised shop names. However, I was pleased to discover that I was able to come up with a list of Halloween-themed alphabetised shop names for this book, starting with Amazing Broomsticks, Costumes & Disguises, Enchantments and Fortunes and so on.

Ingela has worked her magic on the illustrations once again, creating a vibrant streetscape in a zingy Halloween palette of oranges, purples and pinks. And, as with the other books in the series, the reverse side of the book opens out to present a detailed panorama. In this book the panorama is set at night and includes young animals trick or treating, a haunted mansion, a Halloween fair and a pumpkin farm.