My top 9 spooky picture books │#Jobookchat

Ok, my two kids are 4 and 2 so when I say “spooky” what I really mean is that they have a slight Halloween theme. I do think most people, kids included, like to be spooked a little (I love a creepy book or film) but obviously you know what your child would or wouldn’t like. Use your own judgement. 

Here are 9 of our favourite spooky books, which I think would be ideal for some Halloween reading. Although, I must say, we do read them all year round. 

NB. I have added and affiliate link for each of these titles. To find out more about what that means, check out the bottom of the post.

1) Winnie the Witch*
We love most of the books in the Winnie and Wilbur series but, for the purpose of this list, I’ve gone for the original. Winnie is, quite frankly, a pretty scatterbrained witch, has a little bit of a temper, and has a bit of a love-hate relationship going on with her cat Wilbur. But that just makes for great stories. We can spend ages pouring over the illustrations by the amazing Korky Paul.

Another witch, but these stories are much shorter and with much simpler illustrations than Winnie the Witch. Again, there’s plenty of titles in the Meg and Mog series but here I’ve gone for the original.

I picked this book up in our local independent book shop. I’d never heard of it before, and I don’t think I’ve seen it in a shop since. The story is about a family of monsters and the parents are trying to persuade their son to eat his people, using the bribe of his favourite pudding.

We have a few of these books, and we love them all. They are about a little girl and her granny, who is a bit unusual. They get up to all sorts of mischief, along with granny’s menagerie of bats, cats and frogs. 

I like the “Ten Little...” books, and this one is ideal for Halloween. There’s lots of things to look out for in the illustrations, lots of counting to be done, and the rhythm makes it easy for the children to follow and to know when they need to shout “BOO”!

This is one for all those children who like yucky things. Max the monster takes us through various gross things he like to eat. The bonus of this book is that after reading, my cooking doesn’t seem so bad after all!

A bit of a classic, but I had to include Funnybones in the list. I struggle to think of many other skeleton based kids stories, but we do like the spooky setting of this one.

This is a firm favourite with my 2 year old, due to the book’s interactive nature. It’s not the most relaxing bedtime story (probably why he chooses to read it most nights) but if your child bores easily of story time, or struggles to stay focused on a book, this would be a great one to try with them.

This book actually belonged to my younger brother as a child. He had 2 main obsessions - witches and vacuum cleaners - so this book really hit the spot! It’s a slightly longer book than the others I’ve featured, but the story and illustrations are both lovely.

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 *I sometimes use affiliate links on my site. This just means if you click on an affiliate link, and make a purchase I will earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. Any links which are affiliates will be clearly marked. I only add affiliate links for items which are either relevant to my blog, or which I like and use myself. In this case, we own and read all of these stories regularly.

Spooky stories for preschool children







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