Halloween Costumes for Beginning Readers

I echo Mad for Reading's excellent suggestion to dress up trick-or-treaters as characters from their favorite books. Kids just learning to read have a greater selection to choose from than you might think.

Of course, there's always everybody's favorite, The Cat in the Hat. But what about dressing up two BFFs as Thing One and Thing Two? This works even better with twins.

Encourage boys to take on the identity of Captain Underpants, a truly one-of-a-kind superhero from the series by Dav Pilkey. Girls who like a bit of glam might appreciate the chance to become Fancy Nancy from the popular series by Jane O'Connor. And don't forget the one-handed horse picker-upper Pippi Longstocking.

Clifford the Big Red Dog makes a great costume for pint-sized dog lovers. If you're artistically inclined, face make-up can really make a costume pop. Use red face paint and a red sweatsuit to transform any basic cat costume costume into that dastardly feline Rotten Ralph.

With so many eye-popping costumes to choose from, trick-or-treaters will be bringing home the loot. Just make sure they share!

50 Years, 50 Words, 50 Bucks

The year 2010 is the 50th anniversary of yet another early-reader classic, Green Eggs and Ham by Dr. Seuss (aka Theodor Geisel). First published on August 12, 1960, the early reader has gone on to become one of the top-selling children's books of all time. Green Eggs and Ham came about because of a challenge issued by publisher Bennett Cerf, who bet Seuss that he wouldn't be able to write a book using only 50 words. (The Cat in the Hat, written in 1955, has 223 words.) The rest, as they say, is history. Not only did Seuss spin a fantastical 50-word tale about a reluctant eater who refuses to sample a dish of green eggs and ham pushed on him by the persistent Sam-I-Am, he did so using 49 monosyllabic words. (The exception is "anywhere.") Cerf paid Seuss $50, but the real winners are the thousands of children (and I include myself here) who cut their reading teeth on this delightful book.

Happy anniversary, Green Eggs and Ham!