Boo to You!: With Audio Recording

by Lois Ehlert, Lois Ehlert (Illustrator)

Overview

The harvest garden is bursting with delicious vegetables, the pumpkins are decorated and lit, and the mice have their costumes ready. Everyone is looking forward to the annual Halloween-night feast. Scary Cat wasn’t invited to the party, but he seems to think he’s coming anyway. Time for a clever mouse-style surprise to outsmart that cat!

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781439156124
Publisher:	Beach Lane Books
Publication date:	08/07/2012
Sold by:	SIMON & SCHUSTER
Format:	eBook
Pages:	42
File size:	42 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.
Age Range:	3 - 7 Years

About the Author

Lois Ehlert has created numerous inventive, celebrated, and bestselling picture books, including Chicka Chicka Boom Boom, Holey Moley, The Scraps Book, Mice, Ten Little Caterpillars, RRRalph, Lots of Spots, Boo to You!, Leaf Man, Waiting for Wings, Planting a Rainbow, Growing Vegetable Soup, and Color Zoo, which received a Caldecott Honor. She lives in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Editorial Reviews

With photographs of autumn vegetation joining handmade paper and twine, Ehlert's trademark collages take on an expressively organic flavor. Blue mice composed of torn fabric, fibrous limbs and seed pod tails are distressed about the return of a “scary cat,” just in time to spoil their harvest party (“Guess who's the creep we didn't invite?”). Using vegetables, flowers and nuts, the clever mice devise a plan to scare the cat away and their efforts pay off on a foldout page. Endnotes offer a discussion about pumpkins and jack-o'-lanterns amid color photographs, as well as a spread showing off autumn plants and vegetables. Ages 3–7. (Aug.)

Publishers Weekly

A strikingly jagged black cat with pumpkin seed teeth dominates the Halloween-orange cover of this sensational new harvest-themed work by Caldecott Honor-winning author and illustrator Lois Ehlert. The "scary cat" is back, and the garden mice are nervous about what that means for their harvest party. They do not mind sharing their bounty with raccoons and squirrels, but meat-eating cats make them nervous. So, they develop a plan. They will scare the cat with creatures they concoct from their garden delights and chase her away from their annual feast. Parents, teachers, and librarians, should be warned: Young readers will be itching to create their own mixed-media images before you get very far into this book. Thankfully, the text is remarkably succinct, so they will not have to wait very long! Make sure you have a wide variety of materials on hand as Ehlert uses a wide variety of objects, from gourds to twine and textured paper to flower blossoms. This book is best used as the inspiration piece for students' own harvest-themed artwork and will be a favorite with the preschool and elementary sets. The finals pages are a double-page spread of "Pumpkin Talk," with full-color pictures of children and jack o' lanterns, a brief paragraph about carving pumpkins, and a recipe for roasted pumpkin seeds. Reviewer: Heidi Hauser Green

Children's Literature - Heidi Hauser Green

PreS-Gr 2—The mice are having a harvest party in the garden and everyone is invited, except for the scary cat. He eats meat and makes the mice feel "edgy." Once the house lights are turned off and night closes in, the decorations start looking mighty spooky. Perhaps they're just scary enough to give that pesky cat a fright? Indeed, he ends up being a scaredy cat and the story concludes with the mice partying on. Ehlert uses her signature collage artwork to evoke the textures, shapes, and colors of autumn that pop against the red backgrounds, teal paper, and green vegetables. The art is more frenetic here than in some of her other work, but it suits the story perfectly. It's only natural that the garden would be a whirlwind of activity. The rhyme scheme works well, although there is one odd line: "Seeing that puss could spoil our summer." Yes, "summer" rhymes with the previous "bummer," but the action takes place in the fall. The end is enhanced by photos of various squashes, nuts, and fruits (all labeled) as well as a recipe for roasting pumpkin seeds. This title will please Ehlert's fans, and it is tailor-made for autumn-themed programs. Pair it with Anne Rockwell's Apples and Pumpkins (S & S, 1989) or Carin Berger's The Little Yellow Leaf (HarperCollins, 2008).—Laura Lutz, formerly at Queens Borough Public Library, NY

School Library Journal

A pair of mice, with the assistance of some of their garden-robbing peers, prepare a harvest feast, not forgetting to make arrangements to scare off that pesky cat. Incorporating photographs of harvest fruits and vegetables (with an abundance of Indian corn and gourds) into her trademark collages fashioned of fabric and cut- and torn-paper, Ehlert arranges a series of striking tableaux as the mice (resplendent in soft, blue handmade paper and sporting braided-twine limbs) go about their business, the cat (with cherry nose and pumpkin-seed teeth) peeking in from the margins. Although some spreads may well overwhelm with the complexity of their detail, the mice's insouciant narration and the inviting seek-and-find nature of the illustrations will keep kids coming back. (pumpkin facts) (Picture book. 3-6)

Kirkus Reviews