Marin Darmonkow

Weeny Meeny had finally turned one thousand years old, and her magical community no longer viewed her as a toddler. Now she could finally go out trick-or-treating on Halloween! Unfortunately for her, the local witches' custom of flying everywhere had led them to neglect the local ground-level streets of Witchburg, which were cluttered with garbage and overgrown with weeds. Tossing and turning on the night before Halloween, Weeny Witch teamed up her her pet cat and crow to find a magical solution to this problem, conjuring up herds of sheep and shepherds, who helped to clean up the streets...

As someone who loves Halloween, and who considers herself an aficionado of witchy picture books–this is the 494th book I have read for my "witchy-witches" project—I expected to enjoy Weeny Meeny's Halloween far more than I actually did. Although I appreciated some of the clever ideas here—the fact that witchy flying had led to neglect of the ground, the use of sheep (which Weeny Meeny had been trying to count, to get to sleep) to get the weeds under control, the collaboration of witch, cat and crow—somehow the end product just didn't come together very well for me. I found the text somewhat awkward, and a bit too wordy and overlong, and think it could have benefited from some editing. The artwork was interesting, and reminded me a bit of Quentin Blake, but ultimately wasn't really to my taste. I'm glad to have read this one, for the aforementioned "witchy witches" project, but don't strongly recommend it.… (mer)