A Halloween Book With a Warning
And a touch of problematic cultural appropriation
Happy Halloween, y’all! Do you celebrate? We do. Halloween is one of my favorite holidays, and the kickstarter for the season of continual celebration. October through December is a non-stop party, and I will fuel myself with all the candy tonight!
My kids are in costume a large percentage of the year, and their favorite food group is sugar, so Halloween is basically a dream-come-true holiday. We are supposed to wear costumes and get to demand sugar from strangers? Yes please.
After we exhaust ourselves with hosting a party, trick-or-treating, letting our kids eat all the sugar, and then corralling them into bed, I plan on watching falling asleep with Young Frankenstein on in the background.
Though the spooky decorations and severed limbs can haunt your dreams, one of the scarier things that can happen is pulling down a beloved story from your childhood and realizing that the classic Halloween book you read on repeat is, in fact, full of characters in Halloween costumes that are cultural appropriation. Yikes.
I guess now is going to be a great time to have that conversation about cultural appropriation and why it is offensive and harmful to dress up as a Native American (or Inuit) for Halloween. Traditional Regalia is not a costume.1
Can I still recommend this book? Yes, with a caveat: be prepared to explain offensive Halloween costumes. Also, in good news, there is an updated version (linked below) where our main character, Sam, dons a pirate costume instead. If you don’t already own the original, get the updated version! Problem (probably) solved!
JUST ONE BOOK
Popcorn! by Frank Asch
One Halloween night, Sam’s parents head out and leave him home alone. Questionably, Sam decides he should call all his friends, invite them over, and throw a little party. Every single guest brings a gift of popcorn. Things are going great (albeit a little wild) when one enthusiastic partygoer thinks it would be a great idea to pop ALL the popcorn. With help from his friends, Sam manages to get the giant cauldron of a pot on the stove and gets to poppin. Problem.
There is only one way out of this mess. Munch. Crunch. Munch. Crunch. The moral of the story: go ahead and party, but not too hard, or you’ll have to live with the consequences. Is the popcorn a metaphor?! All I know is I want to be swinging on the chandelier at Sam’s party.
When we were kids, our parents left us basically unsupervised (the oldest of the kids was “in charge”) at our friend’s house while they hosted a chili cookoff. We thought we would try to pop the decorative flint corn (we used to call it indian corn because it was the 90’s and I’m sorry we didn’t know better!) in the microwave. We caught the thing on fire and had to carry it, smoking, out of the house in some kind of bowl and then frantically try to rid the house of evidence. When the parental unit got home, she walked in the door, stopped dead in her tracks, and immediately asked, “Did something burn?” We fessed up real quick.
When we got home the next day, 2 out of 3 of our carnival-won goldfish were dead. Our parents said the “spicy chili air” must have made them jump out of the bowl. In retrospect, their confession may or may not have been as honest as ours.
If you are looking for a good way to get rid of Halloween candy once the fun is done, read Goblin Moon by Jacqueline Rogers. I don’t know if I will have my children leave candy out to appease the Goblins, but I am considering bribing them to trade it in for cash or a toy. My go-to so far is to let them eat as much as they want on Halloween night (pukefest), and then stash the bags at the top of the pantry out of sight, doling it out less and less frequently until we all forget about it.
I hope your Halloween is filled with more treats than tricks, and that nobody wears an offensive costume. Although, according to this BUSTLE article originally published in 2018, my kid is wearing a costume that is culturally appropriative. So, oops. Time for a family lesson on Shinobi (ninja).
Can we take some advice from me circa 1990-1996? Just dress up as a black cat on repeat.
What Halloween movie do you watch every year? What is your favorite spooky book? Do you love a good fright?
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Happy reading (and candy eating)! See y’all next week.
I’m cackling at your Halloween escapade. So good to have you back here.
"When the parental unit got home, she walked in the door, stopped dead in her tracks, and immediately asked, “Did something burn?”
Haw!!-- I'm glad you didn't call her 'Mom'-- that woulda been cultural something-or-other!! 😱💦