Gerstein's fluid, exuberant pen-and-ink and watercolor wash illustrations, which frequently appear as panels above and below the text, literally illuminate the story.

Silverman's accessible prose keeps a narrative dense with incidents and people moving along briskly. Poverty drives Sholom's family of 14 from their small shtetl, his mother dies of cholera, and his father marries a shrew, yet Sholom remains upbeat. Gerstein's comic strip–style images of the hero aping his teacher, grandmother and others comically demonstrate the fellow's talents. In the process, the boy discovers a gift for mimicry, and a thirst for stories. 'And when Father was happy, Sholom was happy.' Silverman thus sets the stage for Sholom's quest to please his beloved father. Sholom's father, 'his brow usually furrowed with worry,' looks happy when he reads to his guests at the family's Saturday night parties. 1859–1916), whose work inspired Fiddler on the Roof

) make an ideal pairing for this picture-book biography of Yiddish luminary Sholom Aleichem (born Rabinowitz. With a rhyme scheme that remotely echoes Madeline, a counting pattern that mirrors 'Ten Little Indians,' and a song-like structure reminiscent of The Twelve Days of Christmas, The Halloween House may become a classic in its own right.) and Caldecott Medalist Gerstein ( The Man Who Walked Between the Towers Jon Agee, illustrator of Dmitri the Astronaut, delights young readers again with his artfully cartoonish paintings this time his paintings show the dilapidated, spooky, but oddly festive Halloween house and its lively inhabitants. As the book ends, all the creatures vanish-except, of course, for the two escaped convicts, who end up finding a much safer hiding place.

This eerily mesmerizing rhyme scheme repeats throughout the book as nine vampires rise, eight worms squirm, seven bats swoop, six ghosts boo, five monsters chase, four skeletons dance, three spiders swing, two cats pounce, and one witch flies. a papa werewolf crouched/with his little ones, ten./'Howl,' said the papa./'We howl,' said the ten./So they howled through the night/in the dark, dingy den.' 'In the Halloween house,/in a dark, dingy den. This delightful, rhyming counting book gleefully guides children from one nocturnal creature family to another, starting with a litter of ten werewolves. If you were an escaped convict, where would you choose to hide from the law? Be warned, The Halloween House is not a good choice.

The halloween house erica silverman