The idea for today’s post completely annihilated my original plan. In an early draft I was just going to gather together a variety of Halloween-appropriate links from over the past few years.  For example, there’s this kooky post from a blog called The Haunted Closet (which is still running and fantastic) back in 2010 that examined a James Flora book for young readers (though after reading the post that point could conceivably be deemed arguable) called Grandpa’s Ghost Stories. That’s good stuff, but it’s not really enough to build a blog post upon. Then, to my rescue, in rides Twitter. How on earth could I have forgotten that each and every year the good people of First Book (a nonprofit social enterprise that provides new books, learning materials, and other essentials to children in need) wipes the floor with the kidlit costuming competition? You thought the Scholastic costume contest each year was fancy? You think your local children’s librarians or booksellers or teachers are keen? Baby, you have no idea.

To celebrate the many years of First Book costumes, I’m putting together today a compilation of some of the ones that have given me the most joy over the years. By book they are:

As Alison Morris explained to me, “we depicted all of the books in the series at that time + the three stars + our interns were the Correction Babies”

So how did this all get started?  Alison Morris puts it this way:

“We have almost 100 staff members now at First Book, and every team gets into the Halloween spirit, assembling costumes and performing skits at our annual party held each year at a local restaurant. Our eCommerce team oversees curation for the First Book Marketplace and manages all of the data collection, tagging, uploading, shipping, receiving, etc. that get those books up on the Marketplace and then into the hands of our members. As proud book nerds, we love creating costumes inspired by one of our favorite books from the current calendar year. We have so many favorite titles that it’s often hard to choose, but some work better for costume adaptation than others. Our secondary hope is always that by dressing up as a new book we may help new folks discover it – including our members! Our nonprofit social enterprise now serves a network of more than 325K educators, librarians, and program leaders serving kids in need, and we’re focused every day on increasing their access to brand new books.”

Thanks to Alison and First Book for allowing me to share some of their images. Keep it up, guys! And Happy Halloween to one and all!