Over in the Hollow

Over in the Hollow by Rebecca Dickinson is a counting rhyme for 5 year olds about a hollow full of very friendly spooky creatures.

What happens

It runs on the old Over in the Meadow tune, and it counts all the way from one up to thirteen.

An enormous mother spider spins silver lace with her one small spidey. A mouldy old mummy goes lurching off into the mist with his two. Up in a twisted tangled tree, a mama owl hoots along with three owlets.

Every verse works the same way. The grown-up gives an instruction in capital letters. The little ones shout it straight back. Then off they go and do it.

SPIN, hums the mother. I SPIN, hums the one.

Your reader will be joining in by the second page. Probably rather louder than you had in mind.

The creatures are the full Halloween cast. Vampires in a coffin. Bats flapping. Witches zooming on broomsticks. A daddy Frankenstein and seven little Frankies stomping. A hairy uncle werewolf and eight wolfies going through the graveyard gate. Nine jack-o'-lanterns glowing under a blue moon. A skeleton who boogies. Twelve black kittens hissing. And thirteen little ghosts to finish on.

None of it is frightening. The grandpa vampire nibbles. The auntie witch is described as good. Every family is simply a family, doing the thing their sort of creature does, and going off into the night at the end.

What's clever is that the counting isn't the point of the book. It's just how the book moves. Your child gets one to thirteen without anybody stopping to teach them anything, and thirteen is a nice stretch past the usual ten.

The rhymes are proper rhymes and the rhythm holds all the way through, which matters enormously when you're the one reading it out for the fourth time this week. There are some lovely noisy words in there too. Slink. Delve. Lurch. Glimmer. Woogie.

It's short and it's quick. One of those to have in the house for October, or for any week when your child has decided that monsters are the best thing going.

What to read next

Ready for a few more words on the page? Then the first Haunted Library book is worth a look. Kaz is a ghost boy who can shrink and expand but can't quite bring himself to walk through a wall, and his entire family is watching him try.