Have a Household Party This Halloween!

If you’re planning on playing it safe and staying in this Halloween, it’s not too late to plan a household party. 

The most important part of a Halloween party is making it look good. Learn how to craft costumes, create decorations, or just make some fun crafts to celebrate on Halloween. You can even draw and color Halloween pictures with your kids!

Music makes the perfect backdrop for Halloween crafting or cooking and baking up some Halloween treats. The music on hoopla is available with no wait! Choose from any of the titles here and enjoy the sounds of the spooky season. To make sure the music is child-appropriate, simply click “Children’s titles only” to the left. 

There are plenty of cookbooks with delicious spooky Halloween treats you can check out on Overdrive/Libby and hoopla. Betty Crocker Halloween Cookbook is in ebook format on Overdrive and hoopla, complete with almost 100 recipes, each with a full-color photo, of frightening delights such as Boneyard Dirt Pops, Spiderweb Black Bean Burgers, Chilling Jack-o’-Lantern Smoothies, and more, and it even has tips for setting up a Halloween buffet. Include the Pillsbury Dough Boy in your celebration with Pillsbury Halloween Fun! Below are some more cookbooks with recipes for main dishes, deserts, beverages, and more to make your Halloween full of delicious fun! 

Check out this collection of children’s Holidays & Celebrations Halloween ebooks with more ways to celebrate on Saturday with the family!

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Abbot Public Library is Always Open Online!

Until the building reopens for staff so we can continue Curbside Service and resume accepting returns in our library return bins, you can peruse through ebooks, e-audiobooks, magazines, movies, television, and more from our digital collections! 

Overdrive and its Libby app, as well as hoopla, have many selections of ebooks and e-audiobooks which can be checked out online. Any items on hoopla can be checked out with no wait – although there is a limit of 5 items per month. Many titles are available on Overdrive, and those that aren’t can be reserved while you check out other available titles. If you didn’t want to bother with waiting, there’s a selection of always available ebooks and e-audiobooks you can browse through on Overdrive. 

With Halloween coming up, you may want to read or listen to some spooky stories to get into the spooky spirit. You’ll find ghost stories in ebook format for all ages, including these children and teen collections, all available on hoopla to read right away. Or you can listen to these hoopla e-audiobooks. There’s also a selection of ghost stories on Overdrive, as well as a collection of Halloween Books for All Ages on Overdrive and Halloween selections and supernatural stories on hoopla, the latter of which includes not only ebooks and e-audiobooks, but also streamable movies and television series, music, and more! Plan a movie marathon on hoopla with their various collections, including their featured Thrilling Series for Fall or October Movies of the Month, You don’t want to miss the Leaving hoopla in October movie collection.

If you want more than the 8,000 + movies offered on hoopla, check out IndieFlix and Acorn TV on RB Digital, along with RB Digital Magazines, which offers back issues of popular magazine titles with no return date!,  and The Great Courses, video lectures from some of the top professors about various health, economics, professional and personal development, and more!

Reserve Your Halloween Library Items Today To Get Them Before the Building Closes to Staff Next Week!

You may have read our important update about the building being closed to staff next week for air duct cleaning, which means if you want to check out physical copies of Halloween titles (or any titles for that matter), this Saturday, October 24th, is the last day to pick up physical materials before Halloween via the Abbot Public Library’s Curbside Pickup Service.

Likewise, if you have any items you would like to return before the building’s closure, please put them in a library return bin by 3:00 pm on Saturday, October 24th. After 3:00 pm, the library return bins will be closed to ensure they don’t overflow with uncollected returns.

If you would like to reserve any title(s) available in Marblehead for Curbside Pickup this Saturday, you should reserve them on your library account today. Don’t forget to click “Limit to Available” when searching so you only see titles that should be ready for pickup by Saturday. 

Please wait for a notification that your items are ready for you before you make an appointment for Curbside Pickup, either online or by calling 781-631-1481, Ext. 201 during Curbside Pickup hours (weekdays 2:00 pm – 5:30 pm and Saturday 9:30 am – Noon and 1:00 pm – 3:00 pm). 

Below are some titles that are currently available in Marblehead, and therefore are able to be reserved for Curbside Pickup for this Saturday. Reserve these titles online or search the catalog for available titles you’d like to check out for next week. 

Halloween is definitely not the same this year. Plan a safe stay-in Halloween with help from the following books about decorating and Halloween crafts for all ages! 

Search through more available books, including some ebooks, about Halloween decorating here. 

Children who want to read books about Halloween next week can borrow some of these titles, including collections of spooky stories or fiction titles about witches, vampires, characters celebrating Halloween, and other related books. 

There are plenty of selections for adults as well, from the cute Halloween cozy mystery to terrifying thrillers and horror stories. Browse through available Halloween fiction and horror, which include: 

We also have plenty of titles to choose from online, some which have been mentioned in previous blog posts such as our witch fiction and Summertime Hocus Pocus posts. Reserve any available physical titles for Curbside Pickup this week, or check out what our online collections have to offer you to help you celebrate a safe Halloween.

A Little Summertime Hocus Pocus

If you weren’t ready for Christmas in July, what about Halloween in August? You may remember that last summer, Marblehead was overrun with ghosts, pumpkins, and cobwebs during the filming of the upcoming Netflix original, Hubie Halloween. To get back into that spooky spirit, here are some Halloween Items you can check out online or reserve for Curbside Pickup!

Another movie filmed in Marblehead and the surrounding areas, Hocus Pocus features a trio of evil witches who are brought back from the dead and wreak havoc on Salem, Massachusetts. You can enjoy the book version, Hocus Pocus and The All-New Sequel, as an ebook or audiobook on Overdrive or an ebook on hoopla. The book contains the original tale as well as a new adventure that takes place one generation later.

This year, Salem’s Haunted Happenings will be quite different. You can read about Salem and its Halloween happenings in J. W. Ocker’s A Season with the Witch: The Magic and Mayhem of Halloween in Salem, Massachusetts, which you can reserve  in print format for Curbside Pickup or read on Overdrive as an ebook. The book includes the occult enthusiast’s experiences visiting the attractions and historical sites, as well as black-and-white photos which give a glimpse into Witch City.

If you want to stay safe and healthy at home this October 31st, you can make your own Halloween celebration! Listen to Halloween music on hoopla to get in the groove and have a good motivational backdrop for crafting and making decorations and costumes. The Spirit Of Halloween – 62 Classic Halloween Songs has theme songs from Harry Potter, The Addams Family, Corpse Bride, GhostBusters, and more! Some of these as well and others can be found in Halloween Treats – 50 Spooky Songs And Tunes For The Spirit Of Halloween!. For music geared towards kids, try this trio of Kidz Bop Halloween or Drew’s Famous – The Very Best Halloween Songs For Kids, or even Mickey’s Monster Mash.

Creative Costumes & Halloween Decor: 50 Projects to Sew & Craft will give you ideas not only of costumes you can easily make, with designs for tabards, gowns, and full suits; but it will also give you ideas for how to decorate your house with common household items and popular craft materials such as papier mache, felt, craft foam, floral materials, and polymer clay. You can make it even more simple and decorate with origami from Origami for Halloween.

Some other ways to decorate are carving pumpkins, creating a haunted house, and making festive fall quilts. If you need more ideas, reserve some of these Halloween decorating items for Curbside Pickup, which include Martha’s Halloween Ideas (DVD), Halloween: The Best of Martha Stewart Living, Spooky & Bright : 101 Halloween Ideas, and Better Homes and Gardens Halloween : 101 Frightfully Fun Ideas.

If you don’t want to think about decorating for Halloween yet, get comfortable with a cozy like Halloween Murder: a Lucy Stone Mystery by Leslie Meier, which you can check out in ebook format on Overdrive/the Libby app or hoopla. The book includes two Halloween mysteries set in Tinker’s Cove, Maine. More books in the series can be found in print and ebook format, including a few more Halloween stories such as Trick or Treat Murder (in print and ebook format) and Wicked Witch Murder (also in print and ebook format – these two mysteries are the ones that make up Halloween Murder), as well as Candy Corn Murder (print and ebook), and Haunted House Murder (print and ebook).

Browse through all the Halloween print books, ebooks, audiobooks, music, movies, and more on the library catalog for Curbside Pickup, or online through Overdrive, hoopla, and IndieFlix!