In my opinion, the book "The Ghosts Go Haunting" is such a great book, and would definitely be a top choice of mine to read during the fall. The first thing I liked about this book was that it is a play on "The Ants Go Marching" song so the students may be familiar with the pattern of the book. For example, the first page reads: "The ghosts go haunting one by one, Boo! Boo!...The ghosts go haunting one by one. The principal leaps from his chair and runs, and they all go screeching all over the school for some Halloween fun." This quote also shows another thing I liked about this book which is the fact that it includes rhyming phrases. I think this makes the book more whimsical and fun to read for sure. Another things I liked about this book was the full page illustrations. They seem to be done in a collage format, but not as abstract as Eric Carle's illustrations would be. The illustrations also support the text and you can count along with your students on each page to see that there are seven spiders and eight mummies etc. This could also be a great book for a shared reading activity since each page includes what sounds the different Halloween characters make. For example, the skeletons go "clank clank" and the zombies go "brains brains." This would be a fun way to include the students on each page. These sound words are also in a different color than the rest of the text so it is easy to spot them on each page. The big idea of the story was so help the reader count different things and expose them to different creatures that are typical on Halloween. ( )

Summary: This children's book was focusing on teaching children number recognition, counting, and introduction to multiplication tables. It uses the the theme of halloween and characters such as ghosts, spiders, black cats, mummies, and monsters to teach these skills.

Argument: I think this is a good book to read for children especially for its use of math skills. I liked that this book incorporated math in a fun way through Halloween and fun scary characters. For example, on page 13 it says, "The bats go diving four by four. They chase the leaders out the front door, and they all go diving all over the school for some Hal-lo-ween fun". There is also a lot of rhyming that will make it fun and capture the young children's attention. I also like how the action words or words that describe sounds (onomatopoeia) were bold and put in different colors to draw attention to them. The book almost reads like a song, it becomes very rhythmic. The last reason I liked this book was for its use of multiplication tables in the back of the book. It actually shows each Halloween character in rows and columns 2X2 and 4x4, etc.
The main idea of this book was to teach math and multiplication tables in a fun and interesting way. ( )