Allie Gator's Halloween Hayride

by Heather Alexander, Ted Williams (Illustrator)

Halloween is here and it’s Allie Gator’s turn to pull the hayride and help people find the perfect pumpkin. But a black cat keeps crossing her path and that worries Allie. Didn’t Corey Combine and J.T. say black cats are unlucky? Not this one-she helps Allie find the best pumpkin patch of all!

Genres: Halloween, Picture Books, Childrens

24 pages, Paperback

First published September 4, 2006

Reviews

[Manybooks · Rating 3 out of 5]

With Allie Gator's Halloween Hayride (a 2006 picture book featuring John Deere equipment as characters, and yes, that the farm vehicles shown and presented in Allie Gator's Halloween Hayride are all made and sold by John Deere kind of bothers me since I do find product branding and placement in works of fiction more than a bit problematic and especially if this is geared towards young children, and not to mention that I personally speaking also do tend to massively find anthropomorphic trucks, combines etc. a trifle weird), author Heather Alexander sweetly but also totally on the surface and without any type of nuance (in other words very very simply) tells how Allie Gator (with a gator being a small all terrain utility vehicle) is tasked with pulling a hayride wagon of children to a pumpkin patch for Halloween. But getting lost in the farm's corn maze and after an initial worry due to Allie believing the superstitions regarding black cats being bad luck, disoriented Allie Gator finally decides to follow the black feline she has seen in the maze and who leads Allie and the hayride children out of the corn maze and right up to and into the pumpkin patch, and with Allie Gator's Halloween Hayride telling not only a typical Halloween and autumn story featuring a hayride, a corn maze and a pumpkin patch but that Alexander's text also and nicely shows that black cats are not bad luck (and that the black feline of Allie Gator's Halloween Hayride not only helps Allie Gator and the children get out of the corn maze but is also and obviously not in any way an unlucky and a problematic symbol at all).

Now with regard to Ted Williams' bright and cartoon like accompanying illustrations for Allie Gator's Halloween Hayride, yes, they do a very good job mirroring Heather Alexander's words and they also often visually expand on the featured story (and that the farm scenes, and especially the hayride, corn maze and the pumpkin patch as well as the cute black farm cat who helps Allie Gator and the children "escape" from the corn maze are visually delightful and for me also a bit better and more descriptive and expansive than what Alexander is textually providing in Allie Gator's Halloween Hayride). However, with regard to the product branding and placement issues mentioned above, I certainly do not really like and do not really appreciate that Willians is obviously depicting Allie Gator (and all of the farm equipment) as being John Deere and that while for young children (and especially for kids who enjoy tractors and farm equipment) Allie Gator's Halloween Hayride will probably be both a verbal and a visual hit, for me personally speaking, there are just too many niggling little issues (see above) for me top consider more than a low three star rating for Allie Gator's Halloween Hayride (and that said three stars is also pretty generous on my part as well).

[Tiffany · Rating 3 out of 5]

A cute story for little kids especially if they like John Deere farm equipment.

[Emily Bily · Rating 1 out of 5]

The art was derivative; there were too many characters for an early reader book, and you just want to smack Allie for being such a moron.

[Cheryl · Rating 3 out of 5]

Aww, awfully cute for a promotional book. And kids love machines, right? I would have read this to my kids when they were little in Wisconsin. openlibrary.org