Halloween A B C Book

While I have definitely enjoyed reading (visiting) Halloween ABC and Eve Merriam's spooky, generally humorously quirky, but sometimes also perhaps more than a bit potentially violently creepy, occasionally even seemingly promoting murder and mayhem poetry (and have indeed also found Lane Smith's accompanying illustrations the absolute perfect visual mirror to and of the author's lyrical texts, darkly hued, imaginative but also always delightfully fun in a perfectly ghoulish sort of way), I nevertheless have not been totally and utterly wowed with and by Merriam's Halloween themed verses as a collective, as an entire entity in and of itself. For although MOST of the letter sections, while MOST of the presented verses of Halloween ABC have absolutely and certainly been both fun and engagingly uncannily creepy in both content and form, and some of them even rather informationally enlightening, such as for example the fact that Merriam's poem on Masks for the letter M section of Halloween ABC rather spectacularly alludes to and points out carnivalesque inversions, with the higher ups becoming the lower downs and vice versa, or that according to to the author, according to Eve Merriam, elves usually only turn potentially nasty or evil if/when they have been tormented and/or not adequately appreciated by the humans they are generally trying to help and succour, I did and do have some personal issues with the fact that in many of the sections on Halloween types of animals, and in particular bats and vipers (snakes), Merriam certainly and unfortunately portrays them as much much too inherently and potentially nasty, uncanny and yes almost terrible and horrid by nature (and to the point that I for one would be afraid of certain readers being tempted to not only avoid but to actually attack and torture these animal species simply due to suspicion and personal fear).

However, even with my mild personal issues regarding SOME of the presented verses, I am still and indeed rebelliously granting a full and glowing five stars to Halloween ABC, as for one, I have indeed massively enjoyed and appreciated my reading experience (and find the spooky poems for the most part just so totally and utterly right for Halloween) and for two, considering that this book has repeatedly been both challenged and banned in especially the Bible Belt areas of the United States, of course, I am going to be granting five stars for Halloween ABC (and to once again let the ignoramuses who have banned and or censored Halloween ABC know in no uncertain terms that they are with their attitudes and actions not only akin and alike to the Nazis, to the Stalinists, to any dictatorial states that ban and censors books, but that really, with their striving to have Halloween ABC banned because it contains poems depicting violence, demons, witchcraft and the like, well, sorry, but it is THEY who are the evil ones here, it is THEY who are demonic, uncanny and frighteningly dangerously undemocratic). Highly recommended (and while I do think that some of the poems featured in Halloween ABC might perhaps be a bit too creepy for very intensely sensitive children, actually, and I say that as someone who frightens and startles quite easily at times, NONE of the poems were really all that overly freaky or creepy, and in almost all of them, there is also such a sense of fun and games, of laughing at the uncanny that the potential for Eve Merriam's printed verses in any way frightening children or actually inducing nightmares is greatly mitigated and reduced).