The Best Halloween Ever Read Free Page A

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Discuss Halloween costumes—at least three paragraphs; Owls, bats,toads—choose one and discuss importance to Halloween in three paragraphs; Witch and broomstick. Why?—at least three paragraphs.
“I have to read all about pumpkins,” Charlie grumbled, “and then tell what all we do with them, and why.”
    “Pumpkin pie,” I said. “You could write out the recipe for pumpkin pie.” I thought that could be part of Charlie’s paper, but he thought it could be the whole thing, so he was excited.
    “You buy a can of pumpkin,” Mother told him, “and you buy a pie shell. Put the pumpkin into the pie shell, put it into the oven, and bake it for forty-five minutes.”
    Charlie frowned. “Is that a recipe?”
    “It’s my recipe,” Mother said.
    Charlie’s teacher said it was her recipe, too, but it better not be Charlie’s paper or he would have to do it over. Kindergarten kids were lucky because they could just draw black cats and spooky houses the way they always did, and everyone in my class was lucky because Mrs. Hazelwood made all the assignments extra credit so you didn’t
have
to do them.
    “But of course,” she said, “I hope all of you will take this opportunity to learn a little more about Halloween customs and traditions.”
    Right away Alice sharpened up her pencil and copied everything off the board, so you knew where all the extra credit was going to go.
    “I don’t care if she has all the extra credit in the world,” Louella McCluskey said, “and I don’t care about all the homework either, if it means we get to have Halloween after all. What are you going to be?” She sighed. “I guess I’ll have to be a Pilgrim again.”
    Mrs. McCluskey had won a Pilgrim costume in a Chamber of Commerce Turkey Raffle and she didn’t know what else to do with it, so Louella had already been a Pilgrim twice.
    “Unless you want to trade,” she said, “and be the Pilgrim this year. My mother won’t let the costume go to waste.”
    “No,” I said. “I’m going to be a belly dancer. I’ve got all the stuff for it—part of a sparkly bathing suit and some curtains and some long beads.”
    “Your mother won’t let you be a belly dancer,” Louella said, “with your whole middle showing and a jewel in your belly button!”
    She was partly right. Mother said I absolutely could not have any jewel in my belly button. “ … or anything else. And you can’t go barefoot. You’ll have to wear some kind of shoes.”
    “And if it’s cold,” I said, “I’ll take that big lacy tablecloth for a shawl.”
    She looked surprised. “Well, it won’t be cold in the school.”
    “But before that,” I said, “when we go trick-or-treating.”
    “Beth,
nobody
is going to go trick-or-treating. You know that. It’s the whole point of having Halloween at school.”
    Charlie yelped. “The whole point of Halloween
is
trick-or-treating for candy!”
    “No, around here the whole point of Halloween is to beware of the Herdmans. Think about it—the dogs and cats and the Rotary Club cake … and you, Charlie, spray-painted green from head to foot!”
    Of course Charlie wasn’t the only spray-painted kid that year, and green wasn’t the only color. There were red kids and blue kids and some gold kids, including Alice. Mrs. Wendleken said it was a miracle that Alice didn’t die of clogged-up skin pores, but you could tell that Alice didn’t really mind because she was still a little sparkly, here and there, two weeks after Halloween.
    By now Mother was all warmed up to the subject. “ … and the turkey farm,” she went on, “when they turned on the sprinklers and nearly drowned all the turkeys. Yes, and the candy. Every year we buy all this candy and hand it out, and the Herdmans end up with all of it. I don’t know what they do with all that candy, year after year. They couldn’t possibly eat it.”
    I knew Charlie didn’t want to talk about that, because one year Leroy Herdman made a bunch of