A Creepy Countdown. Dieser Artikel ist nicht verfügbar.A Creepy Countdown

From one to ten--and down again to one. And every number will make you shiver and shake. (Well, sometimes you will be shaking with laughter, but no matter.)

Start counting with One Tall Scarecrow. Go on to Two Lumpy Toads. How long will it take you to learn all these creepy couplets by heart? Not much longer than it will take you to count to ten and down again to one!

On you mark--get set--GO!What do lumpy toads, hooting owls, furry bats, skinny witches, ghastly ghosts, yowling cats, and brave mice have in common? They all parade through the spine-tingling pages of Charlotte Huck's imaginative countdown and revel in an especially eerie night! But the mice get the last Boo (or maybe young readers do) in this enchanting book that goes from one to ten and back again, and dazzles with its ticklish scratchboard pictures. A positively creepy-crawly read-aloud for Halloween, storytime, and anytime!

"When I was a child, my favorite fairy tale was the story of Furball. I loved this variant of Cinderella that portrays a spunky young woman who uses her own ingenuity to change her life," says Charlotte Huck. She wondered why this dramatic story had never appeared in a picture-book edition, and it is not surprising that she chose it as the basis of her first book for children, Princess Furball. She felt that the selection of the right illustrator was crucial, and she says, 'Anita Lobel was the perfect artist for it. I think no one today extends the narrative of the story through art in the way Anita does. She is a true master." Charlotte Huck's retelling of a second classic fairy tale, Toads and Diamonds, was also illustrated by Anita Lobel.

Ms. Huck was a professor at Ohio State University for thirty years, and in 1996 the university established in her name the first endowed professorship in children's literature in the United States. Her honors include Ohio State University's Distinguished Teaching Award and the Arbuthnot Award, given annually by the International Reading Association to an outstanding professor of children's literature, and she was selected by the Association of Library Service to Children of the American Library Association to deliver an Arbuthnot Honorary Lecture.

Ms. Huck was the author of five editions of the classic Children's Literature in the Elementary School. As an anthologist, she selected poems of nineteen wellknown poets to create Secret Places, a collection for the youngest readers.

Jos. A. Smith, illustrator of Hurry! by Jessie Haas, Ogres! Ogres! Ogres!: A Feasting Frenzy from A to Z by Nicholas Heller, and A Creepy Countdown by Charlotte Huck, lives in New York City.