Spine-tingling Halloween Treats: reviews by Deborah Hopkinson from BookPage. Highlighted titles include: What Are You Afraid Of? Stories about Phobias, edited by Donald R. Gallo (Candlewick, 2006)(excerpt); Scary Stories by Barry Moser (Chronicle, 2006); and All Hallow’s Eve by Vivian Vande Velde (Harcourt, 2006)(excerpt). Read a Cynsations interview with Deborah Hopkinson.

Check out all the great, new teacher guides at Tracie Vaughn Zimmer’s site. New guides include River Friendly, River Wild by Jane Kurtz, illustrated by Neil Brennan; 101 Ways to Bug Your Parents by Lee Wardlaw; Hugging the Rock by Susan Taylor Brown; The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan; Tofu and T. rex by Greg Leitich Smith; Vive La Paris by Esme Raji Codell; and Blind Faith by Ellen Wittlinger.

What else you should be reading this month: All Hallows Eve: 13 Stories by Vivian Vande Velde (Harcourt, 2006). Or, in other words, “Thirteen tales of Halloween horrors, including ghosts, vampires, and pranks gone awry.”

The YA Authors Cafe Chat on October 10 will have a supernatural theme in honor of Halloween. Guest host Marlene Perez (author of the forthcoming Dead Is The New Black) will interview Melissa de la Cruz, author of Blue Bloods, and Bev Katz Rosenbaum, author of I Was a Teenaged Popsicle (Berkley, 2006). The chats are held on Tuesdays at 8:30 p.m. EST, 7:30 CST, 5:30 Pacific. Go to www.yaauthorscafe.com and click the chatroom icon to enter the chat.