Shake dem Halloween Bones!

Each year, I read this really fun Halloween book to the 3rd graders called Shake dem Halloween Bones! by W. Nikola-Lisa and illustrated by Mike Reed. (Boston : Houghton Mifflin Co., 1997.)

It is about a Halloween ball, a hip-hop Halloween ball, told in rhyme by a DJ who has a jack-o'-lantern head! The storybook characters (or maybe just kids dressed up as fairy tale favorites??!!) have a hootin' good time "shaking dem bones" as they dance the night away. There are Red Riding Hood, Tom Thumb, Snow White, Goldilocks, and Rapunzel, and others and the kids love figuring out who they are from the clues in the hip-hop rhymes and fun colorful illustrations. There are also monsters, shiny eyes, glowing pumpkins, black cats lurking everywhere and each time I read it, I/we discover ones we've missed before. I pass out the "shake, shake dem bones" song on orange pumpkin-colored paper and the students dance and sing along whenever the song comes up in the text. They really get into shakin' dem bones! A really fun book! Since I will be at the Blogging workshop on Halloween this year, we did it last Wednesday instead! Maybe we can "shake dem bones" during the break?!?!?!?!

~ Rosemarie Borsody, Lenox Middle/High School Library