Superheroes, candy, witches and spells

Halloween last week was fun, we had two families over and went wild.  I went with the moms and the kids to go trick-or-treating, and Jonathan and the other dad stayed at our house to scare the kids who came to the front door (Jonathan was a ghoul and our house is totally decked out, so this was very easily done).  Fun pictures below:

In the hallway before going out.  Xander is Iron Man.

Ari Wolverine.

Pirate Iron Man and little brother; note Ari's claws.  He left them with me one house down because they were getting in the way of the candy bucket.

The funny part of this picture is Ari hiding out behind the skeleton.  Noah was "dancing" with it and Ari totally freaked out.

The flash was on so it looks light in this picture, but it was actually pitch-dark.  We gave every boy a glow stick for their candy buckets and a fluorescent arm band before we left, to see them by.  It was surprisingly quite helpful.

Oh, the seriousness of running from house to house!

Aaaghh CANDY!!

In the spirit of the holiday, last month I read Kim Harrison's Dead Witch Walking, which I thought would be cheesy, but which I actually quite liked.  It's beach reading, about a witch bounty hunter in an alternate USA where the supernatural and human live side-by-side.  I originally got it because it'S set in Cincinnati and northern Kentucky, so it's really funny reading all these landmarks that I know and yet having them be paranormal.  It's a lot like the Harry Dresden series, so I'd highly recommend it if you're into that kind of thing.

This year I read Lilith's Cave: Jewish Stories of the Supernatural, compiled by Howard Schwartz, cover to cover, looking for ghost tales to tell to the 4th-6th graders in religious school.  They loved it, and the book is a great resource.  I was surprised by how many of the tales are decidedly NOT kid-friendly!

And last but not least, I'm almost done with Enchantress: A Novel of Rav Hisda's Daughter by Maggie Anton.  I love that the main character is a female sorceress in Babylonian times - the novel, like the first in the series, is basically a fictionalization of my rabbinic thesis - but I dunno, I'm having trouble relating to it, because so much of it is rooted in fact and then boom something supernatural happens.  It's told in first person, and obviously the sorceresses of the time believed in demons and spirits and spells... but I can't quite get past the dichotomy between the historical Talmud explanation parts and the witch-plot parts.  I enjoyed the last one significantly more, as the natural/supernatural link felt seamless.  That said, Maggie Anton is coming to CBI to present on her book this month, and I'm really excited to meet her in person!