Who’s Afraid of Fruity Phlegmballs?

The wind howls, a dark shadow crosses the moon, a chill runs up your spine . . . oh, no, it must be time for your mother-in-law’s annual visit!

Or Halloween, whichever comes first in your annual horror parade.

Another year, another Halloween, another delightful set of creepy books and kits for young goblins and ghosties. Herein, a sampling of spine-tinglers and belly-laughers:

I Spy Spooky Night is the latest addition to the popular “I Spy” series, this time planting its hidden picture riddles in a haunted mansion. Kids are supernaturally engrossed by these books and this Halloween-themed edition should easily hook them--it is the first “I Spy” to have a plot line. Every two-page spread contains a riddle/rhyme that guides children in their search for hidden objects. The photographs by Walter Wick are superior dark works of art in and of themselves.

Those with an academic bent will want a copy of Scary Science on their reference shelves. Nice illustrations and clear text present the facts behind vampires, werewolves and more, backed up by modern science. Of course, there are those little gray areas that can’t quite be explained away--and that’s half the fun of this light-hearted book.

Creepy Cookies is a nice piffle for budding Wolfgang Pucks. This cookie cutter set--a bat, a ghost and so on--includes dessert recipes for everything from Cocoa Bat Bites to Hairy Scary Spider Shortbread. The book is nicely illustrated and the recipes reasonably simple, even for kitchen-impaired adults.

The lawyers for the publisher of the above “Creepy Cookies” have probably already been in touch with the lawyers for Creepy Cookies, which stakes out similar turf as well as the same name. Maybe you should buy both: This is a straight recipe book and a nice supplement to the one above. Recipes range from Decomposed Digits to Fruity Phlegmballs.

Back to the graveyard, where one of Nicholas Greebe’s bones has been stolen. Naturally, his ghost must find it, even as the bone makes a long 100-year journey around half the globe. The amusing story and artwork in The Ghost of Nicholas Greebe make for good nighttime reading in this season of spooky tales.

After a night with “Nicholas Greebe” has them staring at shadows in the bedroom, ratchet up the spooky tale stakes a bit with The Whispering Room: Haunted Poems. The poems range from traditional to contemporary with enough spectral images to keep impressionable young minds swirling.

Now that they’re swirling, well, it’s time to ratchet it up one more notch, this time with The Oxford Book of Scary Tales, a charmingly creepy mix of stories and poems. Each work is set off by a solid mix of graphics and type, making this a pleasure to look at as well as read. (Unfortunately, the team of talented artists get only tiny credit in the back of the book.)

Parents and offspring with a weakness for pop-up books will enjoy Dracula Junior and the Fake Fangs. Young DJ won’t eat Grandma’s soup--it’s too red--and locks himself into his coffin in a huff. Grandma decides to take a nap in her coffin, DJ sneaks out and borrows her fangs . . . and a few mix-ups later, Junior develops an appreciation for the soup.

Another pop-up book aims to rattle the bones of a slightly younger set. Skeleton Closet has plenty of osteoporosis candidates ready to spring out at kidlets, even a canine. A slight work but fun.

Up Pop the Monsters 1-2-3 is a mighty mild pop-up book with a purpose: to teach counting, from 1 to 10. Each set of facing pages contains a pop-up and simple rhyming text that describes the costume in the pop-up and the number being explained.

These young whippersnappers have everything soooo easy! In my day, you had to slog through freezing sleet at dawn, snatch your pumpkin from the farmer’s patch and run like heck, then carve the trophy with sharpened elk bones. Now, kids can just get Pumpkin Carving and head to the supermarket. “Pumpkin Carving” is sort of neat, sort of overkill: The kit includes 37 design templates, pumpkin cutter and scoop, even a blinking battery-powered jack-o-lantern.

Pumpkin Painting may be a hit with little ones who would rather paint than carve. There are 74 ideas on how to create everything from a google-eyed gourd to a little devil; all will require some parental patience and assistance.

Picking up Trick or Treat, Great Pumpkin is like picking up comfort food: This simple tale of the Great Pumpkin from “Peanuts” great Charles M. Schulz is perfect for preschoolers. It’s been gussied up with a sound-panel with ringing bells and groaning pumpkins and the like, pop-outs and holograms, but at its heart it is the same charming material that has made Schulz the beloved gazillionaire he is.

Fans of fantasy--tongue-in-cheek division--will surely like The Goblin Companion, a bracing concoction cooked up by Monty Pythonite Terry Jones and Brian Froud. Froud “discovered” the notebooks of noted goblin portraitist Dashe and with Jones has produced the definitive anthrogoblinology text. An, er, Who’s Whooooo of the goblin world.

Scary Sights & Funny Frights adds a nice touch for itchy little fingers: It’s an interactive storybook to which young readers add the finishing touches with a set of 37 rubber stamps. Labels and an ink pad round out the package.

Baby monsters will have fun lifting the 50--count ‘em, 50--flaps in Old Howl Hall in search of spooky surprises. This flap book teaches letters, colors, numbers and shapes--useful information when sorting out holiday candy.

Another flap book takes a decidedly different tack: Trick or Eeek! hides its joke and riddle punchlines under the flap. Be prepared to groan. A sample: What did the witch have to eat at the party? Chocolate high scream.

You might want to hand out some batteries with Lights Out: Adventure in the Witch’s House. Each page of this tale of a “dark and not at all stormy night” has a round, acetate window with an image on it that projects nicely on the wall. Reading a book in a dark room by flashlight is always fun and the acetate images are the icing on the cake--a perfect way to end a night of trick or treating.

Last--but certainly not least--traditionalists will cheer the reissuing of Ray Bradbury’s The Halloween Tree. Carapace Clavicle Moundshroud takes eight kids on a quest to find their missing friend. Oh, yes, almost forgot to mention: The group travels through time and space. A nice edition, complete with the original illustrations by Joseph Mugnaini.

Fantasy, anyone?

****

I SPY SPOOKY NIGHT. By Jean Marzollo . Photographs by Walter Wick (Scholastic Inc.: $12.95)

SCARY SCIENCE. By Sylvia Funston . Illustrated by Dusan Petricic (Firefly/Owl Books: $9.95)

CREEPY COOKIES. By Tracy Curtis . Illustrated by Jean Pidgeon (Reader’s Digest: $7.99)

CREEPY COOKIES. By Tina Vilicich-Solomon . Illustrated by Dianne O’Quinn Burke (Random House/Kidbacks: $5.99)

THE GHOST OF NICHOLAS GREEBE. By Tony Johnston . Illustrated by S. D. Schindler (Dial Books for Young Readers: $14.99)

THE WHISPERING ROOM. Edited by Gillian Clarke . Illustrated by Justin Todd (Kingfisher: $15.95)

THE OXFORD BOOK OF SCARY TALES. Edited by Dennis Pepper (Oxford University Press: $14.95)

DRACULA JUNIOR AND THE FAKE FANGS. By Julianna Bethlen . Illustrated by Korky Paul (Dial Books for Young Readers: $14.99)

SKELETON CLOSET. Written and illustrated by Steven Guarnaccia (Hyperion: $12.95)

UP POP THE MONSTERS 1-2-3. Written and illustrated by Carla Dijs (Scholastic: $8.95)

PUMPKIN CARVING (Sterling: $19.95)

PUMPKIN PAINTING. By Jordan McKinney (Sterling: $10.95)

TRICK OR TREAT, GREAT PUMPKIN. Written and illustrated by Charles M. Schulz (HarperFestival: $16.95)

THE GOBLIN COMPANION. By Terry Jones . Illustrated by Brian Froud (Turner: $19.95)

SCARY SIGHTS & FUNNY FRIGHTS. By Doris Tomaselli . Illustrated by Nathan Young Jarvis (Reader’s Digest: $9.99)

OLD HOWL HALL. Written and illustrated by Mercer Mayer (Random House: $11.99)

TRICK OR EEEK! By Katy Hall and Lisa Eisenberg . Illustrated by R.W. Alley (HarperFestival: $5.95)

LIGHTS OUT: ADVENTURE IN THE WITCH’S HOUSE. By Lynn Gordon . Illustrated by Susan Synarski (Simon & Schuster: $10.95)

THE HALLOWEEN TREE. By Ray Bradbury . Illustrated by Joseph Mugnaini (Alfred A. Knopf: $17)