I have a confession, I absolutely positively love Halloween. The crisp fall nights, the crunching of leaves being stepped on, the smell of candle wax burning inside a jack-o’-lantern, and the copious amounts of candy. Unfortunately, Halloween might look a little different this year, but luckily for you, I have conjured up some fun and safe Halloween ideas that can be done from the comfort of your own home. A.K. Smiley Public Library has a cornucopia full of books that will surely put you in the Halloween spirit.
One of my favorite things to do for the entire month of October is read spine-chilling books late into the witching hour. Here are some spooky suggestions to check-out that will have you sleeping with the lights on: “The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Vampire Slaying” by Grady Hendrix; “Stake” by Kevin Anderson; “The Ancestor” by Danielle Trussoni; “The Boatman’s Daughter” by Andy Davidson; “Hunted” by Darcy Coates; and “Sealed” by Naomi Booth. Read at your own risk.
If reading alone into the witching hour isn’t your thing and you would rather spend time with your coven than alone, then it sounds like a good ol’-fashioned Halloween themed movie night is in order. We have two options for you from which to select some macabre movies: you can either check out DVDs from the Library or you can use our Kanopy database to stream movies. We have cult classics, such as “Beetlejuice,” “Hocus Pocus,” “The Shining,” “The Conjuring,” and the “Harry Potter” series. On our movie streaming database Kanopy, there are plenty of Halloween gems that will surely keep you up all night, such as “The Witch,” “Let the Right One In,” “Nosferatu,” “Night of the Living Dead,” and “Hereditary.”
Now that we have your entertainment all lined up, the next item on our list of Halloween fun is snacks. Every movie night needs appropriately themed snacks. The cookbook, “The Feast of Fiction Kitchen,” by Jimmy Wong and Ashley Adams is the answer to all your movie themed snack needs. The authors have recipes that coincide with all sorts of movies and TV shows, such as a shrimp cocktail-shaped hand from the movie “Beetlejuice” and home-brewed butterbeer and savory pumpkin pasties to accompany your “Harry Potter” marathon.
If your walls are looking a bit bare and need some spooktacular decorations, we have books for that too. “A Halloween How-To: Costumes, Parties, Decorations, and Destination” by Lesley Pratt Bannatyne, “The Big Book of Holiday Paper Crafts,” and “The Pumpkin Carving Book” for some ghoulish ideas. The last item to set the tone of your awesome Halloween-themed movie night is music. We have two ghastly choices: “New Wave Halloween” and “Spooky Scary Sounds for Halloween,” which will have you dancing to the “Monster Mash” all night.
Creep and crawl your way down to A.K. Smiley Public Library to get your hands on any of our spooktacular titles. We are now open to the public with limited hours and our popular books-to-go program is still available. For more information visit our website at www.akspl.org or call us at 909-798-7565.