saintdonagh's Full Review: Judith Ross Enderle and Stephanie Gordon Tessler -...
"Six Creepy Sheep" takes the Six-Sheep clan of "Sleepy" and "Sandy" fame to a Halloween party... through the requisite dark and scary forest. Each is simply but appropriately attired in a simple ghost costume, topped by a witch hat in one case, adorned by a necktie in another and yet another sheep wears his glasses on the outside of his sheet costume. They walk in single file, as always, across the front cover of the book and into the pages - on their hind legs, perfectly upright. Their pumpkin trick-or-treating sacks are easier to carry this way of course, but from the other books in the series, it's obvious this is their preferred method of travel.
Yes, they're all a bit... odd.
The "Creepy" chapter in their ongoing adventures offers full-page illustrations right to the edge of the page, as we follow the costumed sheep down a dark forest path. The text follows their hallmark rhythm:
"Six creepy sheep went sheep trick-or-treat, all one Halloween night."
Your child will soon be singing along with you, as the sheep count goes from six down to one.... "five creepy sheep went..."
Uh-oh. Where are they disappearing to?
The six sheep run into a series of disasters on their trick-or-treat adventure, including groups of goblins, witches, and other spooks that cross their path and in every case, cause exactly one sheep to experience what looks like a cross between electrocution and nervous breakdown, and disappear from the group. The pictures of the scared sheep are always worth turning the next page for.
In fact, all the illustrations throughout the story are marvellous, which is no mean feat when all the key players are draped with sheets. The "monsters" the sheep encounter offer a chance to challenge young children on guessing, too, as you can always see a nose or leg or hoof or other telling animal part protruding from the witches' hats or other costumes. But the very last illustration is the best.
By the final page, just one tiny sheep (of course it's the very littlest who makes it down the dark path, all alone for the last stretch of it) stands at a pair of giant doors, to trick-or-treat in terrified solitude.... until the door is thrown open to a huge room of bright lights and dozens of friends, including the five scared sheep-siblings and all the other costumed animals that had frightened them off in the first place.
"HAPPY HALLOWEEN!" they cheer you, and between the catchy rhyming lines that took you here, and the surprise at the end, the book is almost sure to win a request for an encore reading.
The text of the story so simple you'll have it memorised after only a few readings. This is surely one of the books that falls victim to the grumpy people who read a few lines in the bookshop and sniff, "Anyone could write THAT" and put it back. But this is one of those wonderful read-a-loud books that rewards you proportionally to what you put into it, as you read - funny voices and jumping at appropriate pages, for instance, were all it took to make my daughter nearly split her sides laughing when we first read it. And because the text is so enjoyable and so simple at the same time, it's also a perfect choice for beginning readers.
Kids who like this one will also enjoy the bedtime story, "Six Sleepy Sheep", plus "Six Sandy Sheep", and "Six Snowy Sheep"... even reading the titles gets a bit hypnotic.
Written in APRIL only to prove that it's a hit all year long.
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