A newberry halloween, p.1
A Newberry Halloween, page 1
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Compilation copyright © 1993
by Martin H. Greenberg and Charles G. Waugh.
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FIRST EDITION
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Printed in the U.S.A.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Lloyd Alexander
THE BADDEST WITCH IN THE WORLD
Beverly Cleary
WITCH GIRL
Elizabeth Coatsworth
A HALLOWEEN TO REMEMBER
E.L. Konigsburg
THE GHOST IN THE ATTIC
Eleanor Estes
POOR LITTLE SATURDAY
Madeleine L'Engle
AH TCHA THE SLEEPER
Arthur Bowie Chrisman
THE WITCH’S EYE
Phyllis Reynolds Naylor
THE MAGIC BALL
Charles J. Finger
THE MAN OF INFLUENCE
Paul Fleischman
CAMP FAT
E.L. Konigsburg
THE HORSE OF THE WAR GOD
Elizabeth Coatsworth
THE YEAR HALLOWEEN HAPPENED ONE DAY EARLY
Virginia Hamilton
About the Authors
About the Editors
Acknowledgments
“The Baddest Witch in the World” by Beverly Cleary—From RAMONA THE PEST by Beverly Cleary. Copyright © 1968 by Beverly Cleary. By permission of Morrow Junior Books, a division of William Morrow &. Co., Inc.
“Witch Girl” by Elizabeth Coatsworth—Copyright 1953 by Story Parade. Reprinted by permission of Kate Barnes for the Estate of Elizabeth Coatsworth.
“A Halloween to Remember” by E. L. Konigsburg—Reprinted with the permission of Atheneum Publishers, an imprint of Macmillan Publishing Company from JENNIFER, HECATE, MACBETH, WILLIAM MCKINLEY, AND ME, ELIZABETH (Chapters 1 &. 2) by E. L. Konigsburg. Copyright © 1967 by E. L. Konigsburg.
“The Ghost in the Attic” by Eleanor Estes—From THE MOFFATS by Eleanor Estes, copyright 1941 by Harcourt Brace &. Company and renewed 1969 by Eleanor Estes, reprinted by permission of the publisher.
“Poor Little Saturday” by Madeleine L’Engle—Copyright © 1956 by King-Size Publications. Reprinted by permission of Lescher &. Lescher, Ltd.
“Ah Tcha the Sleeper” by Arthur Bowie Chrisman—From SHEN OF THE SEA by Arthur Bowie Chrisman. Copyright 1952 by E. P. Dutton, renewed 1953 by Arthur Bowie Chrisman. Used by permission of Dutton’s Children’s Books, a division of Penguin Books USA Inc.
“The Witch’s Eye” by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor—An extract, as approved by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor, from her THE WITCH’S EYE. Copyright © 1990 by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor. By permission of Delacorte Press, a division of Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc.
“The Magic Ball” by Charles J. Finger—From TALES FROM SILVER LANDS by Charles J. Finger. Copyright 1924 by Doubleday, a division of Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc. Used by permission of Doubleday, a division of Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc.
“The Man of Influence” by Paul Fleischman—From GRAVEN IMAGES by Paul Fleischman. Copyright © 1982 by Paul Fleischman. HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.
“Camp Fat” by E. L. Konigsburg—Reprinted with the permission of Atheneum Publishers, an imprint of Macmillan Publishing Company from ALTOGETHER. ONE AT A TIME by E. L. Konigsburg. Copyright © 1971 by E. L. Konigsburg.
“The Horse of the War God” by Elizabeth Coatsworth—Copyright 1932 by Elizabeth Coatsworth. From CRICKET AND THE EMPEROR’S SON by Elizabeth Coatsworth. Reprinted by permission of Kate Barnes for the Estate of Elizabeth Coatsworth.
“The Year Halloween Happened One Day Early” by Virginia Hamilton—An extract, as approved by Virginia Hamilton, from her WILLIE BEA AND THE TIME THE MARTIANS LANDED. Copyright © 1983 by Virginia Hamilton Adoff. By permission of Greenwillow Books, a division of William Morrow &. Company, Inc.
Lloyd Alexander
INTRODUCTION
THE ASSORTMENT OF ghosts, witches, and various pranksters are gathered here for a common purpose: to scare the wits out of us—deliciously; to make us shiver and shriek; and, above all, to delight us. They do it fiendishly well too. And no wonder. For, under the masks and costumes, they’re among our most artful storytellers; indeed, a very distinguished company of Newbery Medalists.
The trick-or-treaters knocking at the door and rattling the windows aren’t all youngsters. Parents and grandparents will be happy to see some of their own childhood favorites, such as Elizabeth Coatsworth and Eleanor Estes. It’s a special pleasure to be reminded of Charles J. Finger, whose contribution is one of the few and surely one of the finest supernatural tales with a Latin-American setting; and Arthur Bowie Chrisman’s beautifully told Chinese story.
Young readers will recognize and eagerly welcome their best-loved authors and characters. No Halloween party, for example, would be complete without the shenanigans of Ramona the Pest, from Beverly Cleary; and E. L. Konigsburg’s Jennifer. Madeleine L’Engle magically whisks us away to South Georgia and a remarkable witch woman. Phyllis Reynolds Naylor haunts us with a witch’s evil eye. Virginia Hamilton evokes the notorious 1938 hoax by Orson Welles that convinced a panicky United States that Martians had landed in New Jersey. In an entirely different mood, with an Italian baroque flavor, Paul Fleischman serves up terror in the grand manner.
In sum, this sack of Halloween goodies includes everything from mythic to modem, from unearthly fantasy to down-to-earth realism, and readers will savor each one.
The genial hosts (not ghosts) and guiding spirits in the festivities are Martin H. Greenberg and Charles G. Waugh. They’ve made their selections with an unerring eye—and ear, for the stories are splendid read-alouds for young people and their elders. Anywhere, anytime. A Newbery Halloween goes well beyond the ordinary seasonal collection and genre tale.
Yes, of course, this present volume is fun, with chills, thrills, and bursts of laughter. As well, there are bright strands of beauty, poetry, and moments of unexpected poignancy. It’s a very durable collection, reaching past the Halloween season, which is short, to enrich young readers’ literary experiences, which is a lifelong process.
As for tricks and treats, there are plenty. These Newbery laureates give us both.
Beverly Cleary
THE BADDEST WITCH
IN THE WORLD
WHEN THE MORNING kindergarten cut jack-o’-lanterns from orange paper and pasted them on the windows so that the light shone through the eye and mouth holes, Ramona knew that at last Halloween was not far away. Next to Christmas and her birthday, Ramona liked Halloween best. She liked dressing up and going trick-or-treating after dark with Beezus. She liked those nights when the bare branches of trees waved against the streetlights, and the world was a ghostly place. Ramona liked scaring people, and she liked the shivery feeling of being scared herself.
Ramona had always enjoyed going to school with her mother to watch the boys and girls of Glenwood School parade on the playground in their Halloween costumes. Afterward she used to eat a doughnut and drink a paper cup of apple juice if there happened to be some left over. This year, after years of sitting on the benches with mothers and little brothers and sisters, Ramona was finally going to get to wear a costume and march around and around the playground. This year she had a doughnut and apple juice coming to her.
“Mama, did you buy my mask?” Ramona asked every day, when she came home from school.
“Not today, dear,” Mrs. Quimby answered. “Don’t pester. I’ll get it the next time I go down to the shopping center.”
Ramona, who did not mean to pester her mother, could not see why grownups had to be so slow. “Make it a bad mask, Mama,” she said. “I want to be the baddest witch in the whole world.”
“You mean the worst witch,” Beezus said, whenever she happened to overhear this conversation.
“I do not,” contradicted Ramona. “I mean the baddest witch.”
“Baddest witch” sounded much scarier than “worst witch,” and Ramona did enjoy stories about bad witches, the badder the better. She had no patience with books about good witches, because witches were supposed to be bad. Ramona had chosen to be a witch for that very reason.
Then one day when Ramona came home from school she found two paper bags on the foot of her bed. One contained black material and a pattern for a witch costume. The picture on the pattern showed the witch’s hat pointed like the letter A. Ramona reached into the second bag and pulled out a rubber witch mask so scary that she quickly dropped it on the bed because she was not sure she even wanted to touch it.
The flabby thing was the grayish-green color of mold and had stringy hair, a hooked nose, snaggle teeth, and a wart on its nose. Its empty eyes seemed to stare at Ramona with a look of evil. The face was so ghastly that Ramona had to remind herself that it was only a rubber mask from the dime store before she could summon enough courage to pick it up and slip it over her head.
Ramona peeked cautiously in the mirror, backed away, and then gathered h er courage for a longer look. That’s really me in there, she told herself and felt better. She ran off to show her mother and discovered that she felt very brave when she was inside the mask and did not have to look at it. “I’m the baddest witch in the world!” she shouted, her voice muffled by the mask, and was delighted when her mother was so frightened she dropped her sewing.
Ramona waited for Beezus and her father to come home, so she could put on her mask and jump out and scare them. But that night, before she went to bed, she rolled up the mask and hid it behind a cushion of the couch in the living room.
“What are you doing that for?” asked Beezus, who had nothing to be afraid of. She was planning to be a princess and wear a narrow pink mask.
“Because I want to,” answered Ramona, who did not care to sleep in the same room with that ghastly, leering face.
Afterward when Ramona wanted to frighten herself she would lift the cushion for a quick glimpse of her scary mask before she clapped the pillow over it again. Scaring herself was such fun.
When Ramona’s costume was finished and the day of the Halloween parade arrived, the morning kindergarten had trouble sitting still for seat work. They wiggled so much while resting on their mats that Miss Binney had to wait a long time before she found someone quiet enough to be the wake-up fairy. When kindergarten was finally dismissed, the whole class forgot the rules and went stampeding out the door. At home Ramona ate only the soft part of her tuna-fish sandwich, because her mother insisted she could not go to the Halloween parade on an empty stomach. She wadded the crusts into her paper napkin and hid them beneath the edge of her plate before she ran to her room to put on her long black dress, her cape, her mask, and her pointed witch hat held on by an elastic under her chin. Ramona had doubts about that elastic—none of the witches whom she met in books seemed to have elastic under their chin—but today she was too happy and excited to bother to make a fuss.
“See, Mama!” she cried. “I’m the baddest witch in the world!”
Mrs. Quimby smiled at Ramona, patted her through the long black dress, and said affectionately, “Sometimes I think you are.”
“Come on, Mama! Let’s go to the Halloween parade.” Ramona had waited so long that she did not see how she could wait another five minutes.
“I told Howie’s mother we would wait for them,” said Mrs. Quimby.
“Mama, did you have to?” protested Ramona, running to the front window to watch for Howie. Fortunately, Mrs. Kemp and Willa Jean were already approaching with Howie dressed in a black cat costume lagging along behind, holding the end of his tail in one hand. Willa Jean in her stroller was wearing a buck-toothed rabbit mask.
Ramona could not wait. She burst out the front door yelling through her mask, “Yah! Yah! I’m the baddest witch in the world! Hurry, Howie! I’m going to get you, Howie!”
Howie walked stolidly along, lugging his tail, so Ramona ran out to meet him. He was not wearing a mask, but instead had pipe cleaners Scotch-taped to his face for whiskers.
“I’m the baddest witch in the world,” Ramona informed him, “and you can be my cat.”
“I don’t want to be your cat,” said Howie. “I don’t want to be a cat at all.”
“Why not, Howie?” asked Mrs. Quimby, who had joined Ramona and the Kemps. “I think you make a very nice cat.”
“My tail is busted,” complained Howie. “I don’t want to be a cat with a busted tail.’
Mrs. Kemp sighed. “Now, Howie, if you’ll just hold up the end of your tail nobody will notice.” Then she said to Mrs. Quimby, “I promised him a pirate costume, but his older sister was sick and while I was taking her temperature Willa Jean crawled into a cupboard and managed to dump a whole quart of salad oil all over the kitchen floor. If you’ve ever had to clean oil off a floor, you know what I went through, and then Howie went into the bathroom and climbed up—yes, dear, I understand you wanted to help—to get a sponge, and he accidentally knelt on a tube of toothpaste that someone had left the top off of—now, Howie, I didn’t say you left the top off—and toothpaste squirted all over the bathroom, and there was another mess to clean up. Well, I finally had to drag his sister’s old cat costume out of a drawer, and when he put it on we discovered the wire in the tail was broken, but there wasn’t time to rip it apart and put in a new wire.”
“You have a handsome set of whiskers,” said Mrs. Quimby, trying to coax Howie to look on the bright side. “Scotch tape itches me,” said Howie.
Ramona could see that Howie was not going to be any fun at all, even on Halloween. Never mind. She would have fun all by herself. “I’m the baddest witch in the world,” she sang in her muffled voice, skipping with both feet. “I’m the baddest witch in the world.”
When they were in sight of the playground, Ramona saw that it was already swarming with both the morning and the afternoon kindergartens in their Halloween costumes. Poor Miss Binney, dressed like Mother Goose, now had the responsibility of sixty-eight boys and girls. “Run along, Ramona,” said Mrs. Quimby, when they had crossed the street. “Howie’s mother and I will go around to the big playground and try to find a seat on a bench before they are all taken.”
Ramona ran screaming onto the playground. “Yah! Yah! I’m the baddest witch in the world!” Nobody paid any attention, because everyone else was screaming, too. The noise was glorious. Ramona yelled and screamed and shrieked and chased anyone who would run. She chased tramps and ghosts and ballerinas. Sometimes other witches in masks exactly like hers chased her, and then she would turn around and chase the witches right back. She tried to chase Howie, but he would not run. He just stood beside the fence holding his broken tail and missing all the fun.
Ramona discovered dear little Davy in a skimpy pirate costume from the dime store. She could tell he was Davy by his thin legs. At last! She pounced and kissed him through her rubber mask. Davy looked startled, but he had the presence of mind to make a gagging noise while Ramona raced away, satisfied that she finally had managed to catch and kiss Davy.
Then Ramona saw Susan getting out of her mother’s car. As she might have guessed, Susan was dressed as an old-fashioned girl with a long skirt, an apron, and pantalettes. “I’m the baddest witch in the world!” yelled Ramona, and ran after Susan whose curls bobbed daintily about her shoulders in a way that could not be disguised. Ramona was unable to resist. After weeks of longing she tweaked one of Susan’s curls, and yelled, “Boing!” through her rubber mask.
“You stop that,” said Susan, and smoothed her curls.
“Yah! Yah! I’m the baddest witch in the world!” Ramona was carried away. She tweaked another curl and yelled a muffled, “Boing!”
A clown laughed and joined Ramona. He too tweaked a curl and yelled, “Boing!”
The old-fashioned girl stamped her foot. “You stop that!” she said angrily.
“Boing! Boing!” Others joined the game. Susan tried to run away, but no matter which way she ran there was someone eager to stretch a curl and yell, “Boing!” Susan ran to Miss Binney. “Miss Binney! Miss Binney!” she cried. “They’re teasing me! They’re pulling my hair and boinging me!”
“Who’s teasing you?” asked Miss Binney.
“Everybody,” said Susan tearfully. “A witch started it.”
“Which witch?” asked Miss Binney.
Susan looked around. “I don’t know which witch,” she said, “but it was a bad witch.”
That’s me, the baddest witch in the world, thought Ramona. At the same time she was a little surprised. That others really would not know that she was behind her mask had never occurred to her.
“Never mind, Susan,” said Miss Binney. “You stay near me, and no one will tease you.”
