Waking on Halloween a young girl realises that there’s a witch’s hat in her bed…

That may seem a short synopsis of a short plot in a short story book, but it covers everything that needs to be said.  At only 40 pages long, most of the download size is the artwork and there is good reason for that.

The most striking thing about this book is the illustration. It has absolutely beautiful sketch artwork throughout, a nice constant theme and formatting that worked even in black and white. That said, to get the best from this book view it in colour for a range of browns and sepia tones. The text pages contain only a few rhyming lines, with a quill poised as though it had just written them.

It does have a few drawbacks. While this is a poem for children, when I read the lines aloud the rhythm was slightly off, and hat and back don’t rhyme! On page 3 I reached my first spelling mistake (‘harry’ instead of ‘hairy’), but this was the only one. I was slightly disappointed because the description mentions five stories, and there’s only one in this ebook, but the book makes it clear that these are other titles are available in the series. Vet or read this before showing it to younger children – the concept and artwork could be disturbing.

Overall, The Witch’s Hat is a charming, rhyming, children’s book with a creepy story – ideal for Halloween and children who like scares.