Literary Halloween parodies

The House that Drac Built
By Judy Sierra Illustrations by Will Hillenbrand. Voyager, $7. Ages 4 to 8.
If you thought Jack’s house was action-packed, wait until you see what’s shaking at Drac’s. In this 1995 revamp of the cumulative nursery rhyme, a coffin falls on a monster, a manticore wrestles a werewolf, and a fiend serves dinner to a zombie. All of this unfolds in Judy Sierra’s crisp verse (“This is the zombie famous in lore/that unwrapped the mummy from days of yore”). Will Hillenbrand’s dark oil-pastel illustrations imbue a delicious eeriness that never gets gruesome. When a bunch of kids come trick-or-treating, they quickly set everything right, neatly wrapping up the mummy—and the story, too.

The Little Green Witch
By Barbara Barbieri McGrath Illustrations by Martha Alexander. Charlesbridge, $15. Ages 3 to 6.
Hanging the cobwebs, dirtying the laundry, spreading the soot—the protagonist in Barbara Barbieri McGrath’s 2005 parody of “The Little Red Hen” has her hands full with un-housework, and her slacker roommates, a bat, ghost and grouchy gremlin, are no help. So when the witch finds some pumpkin seeds, it’s up to her to grow, pick and mash the squash into a pie. Those who’ve read “Red Hen” know that after all that, she’s not about to share the fruits of her labor. But in this telling, the witch takes retribution one step further, paying homage to the original in the process.

Bone Soup
By Cambria Evans Houghton Mifflin, $16. Ages 4 to 8.
Cambria Evans’s 2008 version of “Stone Soup” is wonderfully dark, in both the language and the inventive illustrations, done in pen, watercolor and collage, sprinkled with speech balloons and paneled layouts. When a witch spots Finnigin, a skeletal figure known as “the eater,” rolling into town, she spreads the word to the “townscreatures,” who rush to hide their bat wings and imported stewed eyeballs. But as in the original, Finnigin gets the stingy bunch to pony up. The result is a Halloween feast whose gross-out factor peaks with a close-up of the meal, bubbling over with dried mouse droppings, toenail clippings and plenty of bobbing eyeballs.

The Runaway Mummy
By Michael Rex Putnam, $16. Ages 3 and up.
Michael Rex proved his parody prowess with 2008’s Goodnight Goon, a riff on the lunar Margaret Wise Brown/Clement Hurd story. His latest book spoofs the duo’s independent bunny. Rex sticks closely to the original’s structure, but instead of turning into, say, a trout, the little mummy becomes a sea serpent. Rather than a rock on a mountain, he’s a gargoyle on a frozen summit. And in Rex’s send-up, the doting bunny mommy is a stalking Mother Mummy. When she turns into a sea monster and squeezes the serpent, the little mummy exclaims, “Not so tight, Mommy,” and when she turns into a dragon who warms her gargoyle by breathing fire, he protests, “That’s a little hot!” But when the son threatens to turn into a little boy who plays basketball and takes piano lessons, it’s the mommy who cries uncle, shrieking, “Stop! That’s too much!”

Over in the Hollow
By Rebecca Dickinson Illustrations by S.britt. Chronicle, $16. Ages 3 to 7.
A bunch of baby beasties mind their elders in Rebecca Dickinson’s new rewrite of the counting rhyme “Over in the Meadow.” Forget fishies and birdies; in the hollow, you’ll find werewolfies howling, black kitties hissing, ghosties booing and vampies biting, all together, on cue (“Over in the hollow, ’neath the dark, starry heavens, shake a singing skeleton and his little bones eleven/ ‘Boogie!’ sings the papa./ ‘We boogie!’ sing the eleven”). S.britt’s illustrations—ghosts sport perky blond ponytails and owls look like they flew out of Bambi —are affectionate and sweet, making this a perfectly palatable bedtime story.

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