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Beckoning all Halloween and fright fans! If you’re hosting or attending a party this year, it’s the perfect time to start looking for recipes, crafts and decorating ideas that will help set the ultimate eerie ambience. The following books will spark your creativity and give you plenty of ideas for a dreadfully good time.
Based on the popular movie, “Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas: The Official Cookbook & Entertaining Guide” with recipes by Kim Laidlaw; crafts by Caroline Hall; and text by Jody Revenson is ideal for Jack Skellington fans. For recipes, try Sally’s concoction of Worm’s Wort and Frog’s Breath Soup, the Roasted Squash Mummy Tartlets with their leering olive eyes, or the green and gooey Oogie Boogie Lemon Meringue Cupcakes. One of my favorites is the Man-Eating Marshmallow Crispy Wreaths. Beware of their spiked fangs! Decorate your abode with Vampire Protection Parasols and Black-Light Bugs, Spiders and Scorpions. Be sure to check out “The Nightmare Before Christmas” movie on DVD, available at the library, too.
The Mitchell family’s “Best of How to Haunt Your House” is well suited for artistic people who enjoy creating their own spooky Halloween displays and decorations. Projects, which range from easy to quite elaborate, can involve painting, using a hot glue gun, soldering, and all sorts of different materials. For the adventurous, make a full-sized mummy or scarecrow. I really like some of the smaller projects like the Forbidden Books. Antiquing plastic vampire bats to use as hinged clasps for the Book of Vampire History is truly clever. The Potion Bottle Collection includes creative containers for Distilled Spider Venom and Goblin’s Teeth. Some of the bottles even glow under black light. This book will really unveil your inner mad scientist.
If you’re wondering which spine-tingling films to watch to set the Halloween mood, check out David J. Skal’s book “Fright Favorites: 31 Movies to Haunt Your Halloween and Beyond.” It covers some of the most iconic classic and modern films, along with color pictures and background stories for each. “Dracula,” “The Shining,” “Hocus Pocus,” there’s something for everyone here.
So, you’ve picked out your film from the “Fright Favorites” book. Now, how are you going to watch it? Head over to A.K. Smiley Public Library’s DVD section for a variety of frightening flicks.
Another great option is to use our Kanopy database. Free to those with a Smiley library card, this video streaming service has some outstanding options for scary movies; some familiar and some quite obscure too! Here’s a link where you’ll find Kanopy as well as many other databases: www.akspl.org/elibrary.
Festivities wouldn’t be complete without some musical ambience. For your listening pleasure, check out the following CDs: “Fright Night in the House of Horrors,” “Spooky Scary Sounds for Halloween,” or “New Wave Halloween Just Can’t Get Enough.”
Stay tuned for next week’s article featuring nightmarish novels by Shannon Harris.
Jill Martinson is a library specialist at A.K. Smiley Public Library, 125 W. Vine St., Redlands.
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