Read Underground Hocus Pocus free in the Little Reads app.
Denise Nicole's Underground Hocus Pocus is a spooky Halloween adventure for 10 year olds about a girl who jumps into a leaf pile and just keeps on falling.
Cindy has reached double digits and she's very proud of it. This year she's allowed to carve the family pumpkin herself, and she gives it a happy cat face. That night its candle eyes seem to blink at her. Hmm.
The next day she sneaks out through the garden gate into the woods (she's done it loads of times, and her parents never know). She finds the biggest, crunchiest pile of leaves ever. She jumps. And the ground doesn't stop her.
She lands in a pitch-dark underground bunker. Waiting there is a witch with a wart on her nose, a black hood and a very short temper. And sitting beside Cindy is a tiny black kitten who looks suspiciously like her pumpkin.
The witch won't say how to get out. Instead she sends Cindy stumbling down dark passages from one pool of light to the next. First for a bag of plums. Then a jug of water. Then Cindy has to cook a plum pudding, which the witch eats all by herself.
Cindy is a brilliant heroine. She keeps her nerve, she names the kitten Henry, and when the witch insists on calling her Cynthia, she starts calling the witch Margaret. It's very funny!
Underneath all the bossiness, there are hints that the witch is lonely, and scared of being left on her own. Cindy even feels a pang of sympathy for her, which makes this more interesting than a straight escape story.
One thing to flag. It's a proper stranger-danger situation. A child is kept underground by an adult who won't let her go home, and she's left hungry. She also decides the only way out is to lie. It's all handled lightly, but a reader who worries about being lost or taken may find it unsettling.
If your reader loves a heroine who talks back to a witch, they'll probably enjoy this one.
For something properly creepier, try Neil Gaiman's Coraline. Another curious girl explores where she's been told not to, a haughty black cat keeps watching her, and the grown-ups keep getting her name wrong. Then she finds a door, and a mother with button eyes who wants her to stay.
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