HAP-PEA HALLOWEEN

Baker’s lively legumes return for a Halloween adventure.

In lightly rhyming text, an unseen narrator proposes costume ideas: “A wicked witch with a pointy hat, / a ghost, / a goblin, / or the witch’s cat? / A skeleton with a cane to tap. / Or a flying, flapping, vampire bat!” The suggestions continue, riffing on classic monsters, children’s stories like Peter Pan, and fairy-tale characters such as Rapunzel and Goldilocks. The peas could dress up as animals, Albert Einstein, or “a centipede with fifty friends— // that’s a hundred feet from end to end!” On several spreads, the peas are dwarfed by large-scale lettered phrases like “October 31.” Using ladders, they carve hulking pumpkins with saws, relying on slings and ropes to remove pulp and carrying seeds and harvested chunks away in wheelbarrows. Baker uses the peas’ roundness to their advantage when outfitting them in costumes; one masquerades as an “evil blue” eyeball, others as the planets Earth and Saturn. Many don headgear like flower bonnets or the Statue of Liberty’s crown. A poignant bit of text also gently suggests that eschewing costumes is just fine, too: “Or be yourself… // a little green pea!” Jack-o’-lanterns glow yellow and orange against dark blue-violet spreads as the costumed, treat-seeking peas hit the neighborhood on Halloween night.

An enjoyably spooky outing starring a team of diminutive, endlessly inventive veggies.