Favorite October Books for the Primary Classroom

I Will Chomp You 

This is a very cute book for younger children, kindergarten and first grade. It’s about a monster who tries to keep readers from turning the page, offering many warnings along the way.

The Little Shop of Monsters • This book is a fun twist on monsters. Basically, you go shopping for the monster that fits you best before one of them chooses you. It is by a well-known author of young adult mystery books, R.L.Stine and illustrated by Marc Brown. This book is for older students who aren’t as easily frightened.

Creepy Carrots • The illustrations in this book are awesome! It’s a hilarious book, a little on the scary side, but more funny than scary, about some carrots that scare a rabbit into staying away from the carrot patch.

The Ugly Pumpkin • This is a great book about self-image, from the perspective of a pumpkin who doesn’t quite fit in with the rest of the pumpkins. October is a great time of year, once your class has settled, to start having some of those more difficult conversations.

How many Pumpkin Seeds? is a great book that correlates with math. I’ve used it during our pumpkin exploration and estimations.

At the Old Haunted House has some great illustrations. It is full of Halloween creatures and is written as a poem. You can look inside to see all the fun illustrations and how the text moves across the page. It uses a lot of onomatopoeia, which is fun to explore with students.

Bone Soup is a fun book about a Halloween creature in a new town. It is similar to the class Stone Soup story and would make a great compare-and-contrast lesson.

By the Light of the Halloween Moon has great rhythmic text. It’s about the creatures under a bridge and would make a great study of how words and phrases create rhythm and meaning in a story.

Click, Clack, Boo! • This one is for a bit younger readers, but our reading program does have Click, Clack, Moo!, at about this time of year. This book makes a nice extension to the story.

It’s Halloween is a bit more fun than some of the previous texts. It’s a rhythm text, but on the lighter side, about dressing up. This book also works well for making inferences. It gives clues to each costume, and children can guess the costumes.

Pumpkin Jack follows a jack-o’-lantern through the seasons as it decomposes and eventually becomes part of the garden. It’s a natural fit for science discussions about decomposition and the life cycle, and it works especially well alongside nonfiction pumpkin books.

Room on the Broom by Julia Donaldson — rhythmic text, great for K-2, works well for sequencing and inferencing. The repetitive structure makes it accessible for struggling readers during a read-aloud.

The Legend of Spookley the Square Pumpkin by Joe Troiano — self-acceptance theme, very popular October book. Good for character discussions once the class has settled into the year.

Big Pumpkin by Erica Silverman — cooperative problem-solving in a Halloween context. Great for K-2, and the structure makes it easy to use for sequencing or retelling.

Stellaluna by Janell Cannon — bats fit the October theme, and the book is rich enough for a multi-day compare/contrast lesson (Stellaluna’s behavior as a bat vs. a bird). Works better for grades 1-3.

Heckedy Peg by Audrey and Don Wood — more substantive folk-tale feel, good for grades 2-3 who are ready for a longer narrative.

Skeleton Hiccups by Margery Cuyler — pure fun for younger students. Low text, high engagement.

From Seed to Pumpkin is a classic book about the life cycle of a pumpkin and much more. It is so full of information that I read it over several days, focusing on different parts of the book each day. It’s a great book to use for in-depth study and exploration.

The Pumpkin Book is similar to From See to Pumpkin, but is has a bit more information about how the pumpkins are harvested and what with them in different cultures. One great component is the variety of pumpkins in this book.

Seed, Sprout, Pumpkin Pie uses real photographs throughout and does a great job evoking the senses — it pairs well with science lessons on the plant life cycle and sensory development.

Pumpkin Circle is another book about the life cycle with some amazing in-depth photographs. It is written as a lyrical rhyme. I don’t use this book for the content as much as the photographs.

Bats by Gail Gibbons — a natural October nonfiction pairing. Gail Gibbons is reliable for accurate, readable nonfiction at the primary level.