Hob Goblin wakes up one evening, looks over his hideous face in the cracked mirror, finds himself an altogether handsome fellow, and gets ready for his day... er, night. Looking for his shoes, he finds an old bag of Snail Crunchies left over from his roommate, Bones Jones the skeleton. "Untidy creatures!" Hob says to himself, and grumbles that old Bones doesn’t do anything around the house.Indeed, Bones Jones is in the habit of sitting around spraying himself with furniture polish—- Whooosh-fissssh—- and polishing his fine bones to a glossy sheen. He’s also in the habit of not doing anything because, as he says, in life he was the King of England. "In your former life you were a horse thief!" says Hob, pointing an accusing finger. One of those pointless arguments ensues—- "King!", yells Bones, "horse thief!" yells Hob, "King!", "horse thief!!", "KING!!", etc etc etc—- and Bones decides that he’s not going to stand around and be insulted by the likes of Hob Goblin, and off he goes!
Hob decides that living with a talkative, big-headed skeleton is not for the likes of him and decides to go off to the big city to seek out a slave that WILL do something around the house and not have grand ideas about being the King of England!! Casting a spell on a branch of ragwort so it grows to tremendous size, Hob and his frog, Mud, fly off to the big city full of people to capture a slave in Hob’s black bag.
The first house has a large sign on it that says Happy Halloween, and the house has cutouts of pumpkins, witches and ghosts on it. Hob isn’t sure what that is all about, but he IS sure that Mr. Happy Halloween who lives in the house will probably make a fine cleaning staff who will be better than that good-for-nothing Bones Jones!!
Of course, this begins a series of funny misunderstandings as person after person thinks that Hob is someone dressed up in a REALLY grand Halloween costume, and instead of him bagging a potential slave, people keep tossing wrapped pieces of candy and goodies into his black bag. As Hob is misunderstood, laughed at and even entered into a costume party competition, he begins to see that living with a skeleton isn’t so bad after all; even one who is fond of furniture polish and boasts of being royalty.
In the end, of course, Hob asks Bones Jones to forgive him and they have a fine feast on the candy that Hob has collected.
"Hob Goblin and the Skeleton" is a fine Halloween story, .... The text is fun to read and flows well. There is ample opportunity for the reader to use funny voices for Hob, Bones and the other characters in the book. The illustrations are detailed pencil drawings and Bones Jones is beautifully drawn with enough detail that you can count his vertebrae and fingerbones (skeletons are difficult to draw because of all the details and shading but Ms. Coville has done a masterful job).
The art teacher at the school I teach at was looking through the book and plans to use it in her art lessons to show examples of characture and movement. She also plans to use the book to show that one does not need a million different crayons or pots of paint to make beautiful pictures—- a common pencil can create wonders.
While I generally like ANY story dealing with Halloween, I am especially fond of the message of this book. Many times children will, in a fit of pique, tell their closest friends that they don’t like them because they did or didn’t do some particular thing, or because some little habit of theirs (like forever spraying yourself with furniture polish!) makes the other crazy. Living with people’s little idiosyncrasies is part of life and living with your fellow humans. While the grass may always look greener on the other side, many times it really isn’t, and this story is a prime example of that. Highly recommended!!
