Our Halloween Bookshelf 2016

 Each season I love switching up the boys' bookshelves with a variety of new books to keep reading new, exciting and fun. Reading books is one of LO's favourite activities and I can guarantee that he would quite happily sit and read all day given the choice and with that, we do get through a lot of books. One of my favourite seasons is Autumn and I love Halloween too so it's a fun time to get a bit creative with the bookshelves and introduce a few seasonal reads. Some of these we read last year and I stored in the cupboard ready for this year, but many are actually from our local library. It's a really underused village library so there's always so many books to choose from.

As I love Halloween I normally go completely over the top with decorating the house, costumes and pumpkin carving, but this year we were supposed to be moving on Halloween itself (that's no longer happening and we are currently still waiting on a move date) so I didn't want to spend lots of time decorating only to have to take it all down before Halloween, so our bookshelves are our little bit of Halloween fun this year, together with a mini Halloween party for the boys  at my sister's house this weekend. We'll be dressing up, doing some Halloween baking, reading our books and doing some pumpkin carving too.

Here's what's on our Halloween bookshelves this year...

Autumn by Ailie Busby- This is a nice short book with some beautiful illustrations and it's more about the season of Autumn than Halloween itself.

Creaky Castle by Jane Clarke & Christyan Fox- One of our favourite Halloween reads, we have had this two years running now from the library and LO absolutely loves it. There are lots of things to spot and different flaps to lift. I love interactive books like this.

Funny bones by Janet * Allan Ahlberg- Again this is such a classic and reminds me so much of when I was little. I vividly remember reading this with my sister when she was about 3 or 4 and I was 6. LO and Little L have both enjoyed reading this and I think the high contrast pictures are nice for babies to look at.

Titchy Witch and the Stray Dragon by Rose Impey- This is one we picked up in the library. It's a nice book for young readers as the story is simple and there aren't many words on a page so it's easy for them to remember the key words. Little L loves spotting the black cat on each page and excitedly points at it every time he sees it (he's obsessed with cats). 

Winnie's Haunted House by Valerie Thomas- The Winnie series of books are great to read throughout the year but especially at Hallowee. The illustrations are amazing and so detailed and there's lots to look at an talk about on each page. We did find some of the pictures are a bit spooky though so you may want to avoid this one if your little one doesn't like spooky ghosts and things.

How Do You Know it's Halloween? by Dian Curtis Reagan- This is just a simple little Halloween book I got on Amazon a couple of years ago. It's a lift the flap book and I've enjoyed reading it with both LO and Little L who likes lifting up the flaps to find the picture underneath.

Let if Fall by Maryann Cocca-Leffler- This is all about the season of Autumn and has the most beautiful colourful Autumnal pictures in. It talks about the changing weather, the colourful leaves and  Autumn fayres.

Peppa's Pumpkin Party by Praca Zbiorowa- We tend to have one of the Peppa Pig books on our bookselves each season and this is one of our most read Halloween books as I find it's a nice short story and accessible for LO and Little L too.

Room on the Broom by Julia Donaldson- This is one of LO's favourites and Julia Donaldson is by far our favourite author. The illustrations are amazing and the rhyming words help LO to remember a lot of the text.

The Scarecrow's Wedding by Julia Donaldson- I think this is one of our favourites by Julia Donaldson. It's such a lovely story about two scarecrows who want to get married and start to prepare for their lovely wedding day. It really is such a lovely book.

Whizzy Witch by Damian Harvey & Marjorie Dumortier- This is a library book and to be honest it's not one we have read much but it's an early reader one so it's designed to have a simple story with not many words per page.

Winnie's Magic Wand by Valerie Thomas- LO has loved reading this and he particularly loves shouting 'Abracadabra!' when she casts a spell with her wand. The illustrations are so detailed and there's lots to pick out on each page. 

So that's what's on our Halloween bookshelf for 2016. Do you have any plans for Halloween or do you avoid it altogether? Have you read any of these books with your children? Do let me know if there's any other Halloween or Autumn books you have read and would recommend and I love finding new ones to read with the boys.

I will hopefully be doing a Christmas themed bookshelf in our new house which I'll be sharing on here so watch out for that!