Sweet Halloween Treats for Kids to Download

Trick or Treat, Give me something good to… read? That may not be how the song goes, but Kanopy does offer plenty of e-materials that are sure to make Halloween sweet for kids!

Owl’s Halloween
by Charles Reasoner
eBook
Halloween Ghost
by Charles Reasoner
eBook
Little Halloween
by Denise Brennan-Nelson
eBook
Hailey’s Halloween
by Lisa Bullard
eBook

The Halloween Visitor
by Catherine Hapka and Michelle Smith eBook
The Town of Halloween
by Nicholas Korrow
eBook
200% Halloween
by The Scary Gang
Music
Halloween Collection
by Various Artist
Music
Kidz Bop Halloween
by Kidz Bop Kids
Music
The Cat in the Hat Knows a lot About Halloween?
by Patrick Granleese
Movie
Ghost Squad
by Joel Souza
Movie
A Monster in Paris
by Bibo Bergeron
Movie

Get Celebrity Book Club eBooks for Free

Looking for your next book to read? Check out these book selections from Book Clubs led by some of Hollywood’s brightest stars. You just might find a new favorite book!

Oprah’s Book Club By Oprah Winfrey

The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois
by Honoree Fanonne Jeffers
eBook
Gilead
by Marilynne Robinson
eBook
Caste
by Isabel Wilkerson
eBook

Reese’s Book Club By Reese Witherspoon

L.A. Weather
by Maria Amparo Escando
eBook

We Were Never Here
by Andrea Bartz
eBook
The Paper Palace
by Miranda Cowley Heller
eBook

Noname Book Club By Noname

Heavy
by Kiese Laymon
eBook

The Skin I’m In
by Sharon G. Flake
eBook
The Autobiography of Malcolm X
by Malcolm X
eBook

Read with Jenna By Jenna Bush Hager

Beautiful Country
by Qian Julie Wand
eBook

The Turnout
by Megan Abbott
eBook
Black Buck
by Mateo Askaripour
eBook

My Library Story: “The Happiest Place on Earth”

By James Magruder

Authors James Magruder

Every Saturday morning of my childhood, my mother would pile my two sisters and me into the station wagon to go to the public library, where we were allowed to check out ten books at a time. We had a tough time picking just ten. We’d often finish them all, our own and each other’s, by Wednesday and beg her to take us back after supper.

As a queer teen, the Wheaton Public Library in Wheaton, Illinois was where I indulged my first passion project–the Broadway Musical. I’d bike into town, then sit for hours at a table in by the arts section on the second floor, reading (and re-reading) the standard histories–both gossipy and scholarly–of the form and its most famous practitioners. Then head downstairs to the periodicals department, where I would fill out carbon slips for bound copies of Time, Newsweek, Life, Look, and The New Yorker so I could read the original reviews of all the shows I was learning about. I felt like a scholar. To date, it’s the only research I’ve ever carried out with a full heart and boundless enthusiasm.

I used to declare that I wanted to have my ashes stored in a hollowed-out copy of John Kennedy Toole’s A Confederacy of Dunces and set on a shelf in my personal library, because a roomful of books–whether in Wheaton or Paris or the Pratt–had consistently been the happiest place on earth for me. I now know that my ashes will be laid to rest in Green Mount Cemetery among my husband’s family, but I can’t help but worry over the fate of my books.

Love Slaves of Helen Hadley Hall
by James Magruder
Book

Join us for the Pratt’s Writers LIVE! event with James Magruder and Jen Michalski  on Tuesday, October 26 at 7pm. Follow the Love Slaves of Helen Hadley Hall  Author James Macgruder’s Library Journey. 

Please submit your library journeys to journey@prattlibrary.org

Where my Library Journey Started

by Jen Michalski

Author Jen Michalski

My library journey started with my grandfather. When we were kids, he would take us to the North Point Branch of the Baltimore County Public Library every week. I remember the smell of the library on Saturday mornings, the long, yellow-spined row of Nancy Drew books I worked my way through as a nine-year-old, as well as Encyclopedia Brown, Ramona Quimby, and, as I edged toward my preteen years, S.E. Hinton, Lois Duncan, and J. R. R. Tolkien. My family was working class, lucky enough to have a week’s vacation at Ocean City every year, but as a child I never got to travel outside of Eastern Baltimore County much, except in books—to Hong Kong and Japan with Nancy Drew, to Middle Earth with Tolkien, to Terabithia with C.S. Lewis and Katherine Paterson. 

The Summer She Was Under Water
by Jen Michalski
Book

But my journey didn’t only include books⎯I remember checking out REM’s Reckoning and Fables of the Reconstruction as well as Ella Fitzgerald LPs as a teenager, music I’d never hear on the radio in the tiny Eastern Shore town to which my family moved. It also provided necessary resources for a difficult time in my life. When I graduated college and moved to Baltimore City, the first thing I did was get a library card from the Central Branch of the Enoch Pratt Library. It was the early nineties, I hadn’t come out yet, and I remember picking up The Price of Salt, The Second Sex, and an LGBT handbook at a library sale. They were my first “queer” books, my first exploration of identify in a time before the Internet, and in the years to follow Enoch Pratt became my go-to place to digest important works of lesbian and gay authors. It was also the place at which I embarked on my journey as a professional writer, when I attended my first CityLit Festival in 2006. 

Of course, the pinnacle of my library journey is when I discovered a copy of one of my own novels, The Tide King, at the Central Branch. From young reader to writer to author, the library has played an integral part in my journey every step of the way. 

Don’t miss the Pratt’s Writers LIVE! event with Jen Michalski and James Magruder on Tuesday, October 26 at 7pm. Follow along The Summer She Was Under Water Author Jen Michalski Library Journey.

We want to hear your Pratt Library journey too. Email your story to journey@prattlibrary.org

Learning with STEAM: Download Virtual Zoo

This October, young students can learn more about science, technology, engineering, art, and math with the help of Hoopla! Check out the Virtual Zoo collection that’s full of educational fun.

Swim,Shark,Swim!
by Dom Conlon & Anastasia Izlesou
eBook
Playful As A Panda, Peaceful As A Sloth
by Saskia Lacey
eBook
The Elephants Come Home
by Kim Tomsic & Hadley Hooper
eBook

The Book Of Tiny Creatures
by Nathalie Tordjman,
Julien Norwood &
Emanuelle Tchoukriel
eBook
Why Are Flamingos Pink?
by Nancy Dickmann
eBook
How To Build An Insect
by Roberta Gibson
& Anne Lambelet
eBook
Horse Power
by Jennifer Thermes
eBook
Eye By Eye
by Sara Levine
& T.S. Spookytooth
eBook
Bees Build Beehives
by Elizabeth Raum
eBook
Armor & Animals
by Liz Yohlin Bail
eBook
A Walk In The Rain Forest
by Rebecca L. Johnson
& Phyllis V. Saroff
eBook
A Caravan Of Camels
by Christopher Robbins
& Nichola Cowdery
eBook