Writing a Halloween Book for Children – The Story of Is It Halloween Yet?
Back in 2015 when both of my daughters were toddlers and starting getting interested in books, I had the idea of writing a not too spooky children’s Halloween book about a ghost who was scared of frightening people.
I wanted to share with them the excitement of Halloween books, what with Halloween growing in popularity over here in the UK, superceding Bonfire Night as the biggest autumnal event. So there had to be witches on broomsticks, ghosts in billowing white sheets and pumpkins with faces carved into them.
But of course, I didn’t want to be writing a Halloween book read aloud that would give my young daughters nightmares.
I decided early on that to appeal to my audience, the ghost in this Halloween story had to be female. The name Ghouella came right at the end of the writing process.
Before that, I made the decision to make the copy rhyme as I thought that would give it a lightness and rhythm that wouldn’t sound too scary.
At that time, my daughters were lapping up all things written by Julia Donaldson, with What The Ladybird Heard a particular favourite. So rhymes were the way forward.
With Julia not needing any ideas for books from the likes of me, and with absolutely zero budget for illustrations, I set about writing a rhyming Halloween story for kids that would be part of my Is It? series of books.
Writing in rhyme takes twice the time of prose, I’d say. Having experience of writing song lyrics for my band Fascination Force, and having been an advertising copywriter for nearly 20 years at that point made the job easier.
And when all was done to the best of my ability at the time, I was delighted to self-publish a book that contained just prose, plus a few very dodgy felt-tip pen illustrations by yours truly at the start of each chapter. As for the cover, well, orange has always been closely associated with Halloween, along with black, purple and green. But it’s fair to say this is no classic.
Happily, I managed to shift a few copies of the book annually for a good few years, but it was never going to make the best seller list with its cover and lack of illustrations.
A few years of steady sales of my other books and a successful freelance copywriting career in those halcyon pre-AI days, and by 2023 I felt it was high time to revisit the book.
I found ways I could tweak the words to make them flow even more smoothly than they had in the original 2015 version. But my dream of getting Is It Halloween Yet? professionally illustrated was still beyond my financial means. I did, however have budget for a new cover, which was professionally designed.
Such an improvement, I think you’ll agree.
As my copywriting business began to decline thanks to the theft machines of AI, I knew that hiring the likes of Axel Scheffler and Lydia Monks was likely to remain beyond my means for eternity and beyond. Even less-famous illustrators deserved payment that was out of my league for the number of illustrations I required. So I decided to take the plunge and illustrate the books myself.
Using MS Word. Oh yes.
The results aren’t ever going to delight the eye as much as a pro’s, but they did lend the story a different dimension. And that was reflected in a significant sales boost.
In 2025, paranoia took hold as I realised the ghost I’d used in my illustrations was too close a copy of the one on the book cover, the rights for which I assumed would belong to the cover artist.
So I redesigned the ghost and inserted this new Ghouella into the pics, deciding to also create an alternative cover:
Again, not great. However, Halloween 2025 proved to be the best year for sales to date for the book, although the vast majority of sales were for the print version with the professionally designed cover. No great surprise there.
And that leads us until now. With the white cover not feeling Halloweeny enough, I’ve designed a new cover for 2026.
It’s a bit more colourful and manages to be a little bit spooky without frightening the youngest readers.
Who know how this will fare in the ultra-competitive children’s books market of 2026? Suffice to say, if I ship enough copies this autumn, I’ll finally be able to afford to hire a pro illustrator to finally do Is It Halloween Yet? justice for Halloween 2027.
In the meantime, you can check out the children’s Halloween picture book I’ve been wittering on about by buying the paperback with professionally designed cover here.
Happy Halloween reading to your children this October – minus the nightmares!
Please support human writers who don’t use AI in any way shape or form. A dead giveaway that a writer uses AI is a cover image that has a yellowy tinge and an image that is overcrowded.
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