Lesley Hershman
’Guess what?' said Sam when the two of them walked home from school the next afternoon. ’My mom got me my Halloween costume at Emmet’s yesterday!' ’Which one?' asked Jake nervously. Please please don’t say the astronaut suit, he thought. ’A robot!' said Sam. ’It’s so cool. It has flashing lights and a button you press to make really weird robot noises.' ’Sounds great!' said Jake, relieved to hear that it wasn’t his astronaut suit. But now he had an awful thought. What if someone else bought it? This Halloween, nine-year-old Jake Hornsby wants to wear the astronaut suit hanging in the window of Emmet’s Costume Shop. When his parents refuse to give him the money to buy it, Jake is afraid he will have to spend another Halloween in one of his mother’s crazy homemade costumes. Then when a neighbor gives him a mysterious bag of seeds and promises they’ll grow into an amazing sight on October thirty-first, Jake thinks he’s found a way to earn the money for the astronaut suit. He plants the seeds and sells tickets to his Halloween garden. But although Jake carefully follows the strange instructions required to care for the seeds, nothing seems to be happening and Halloween is drawing near. Will Jake’s Halloween spectacle turn out to be a Halloween disaster? 3
