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Spooky tales for children

A vegetarian vampire with a sweet tooth and a large-mouthed creature with a big appetite and his own eating stool are among the playful and ghoulish standouts in the stacks for kids this Halloween. For more tender trick-or-treaters, there’s plenty of books without a fear factor, including a tale of a dear old cat still learning how to live in her third century.

“Can You See What I See? On a Scary Scary Night’’ (Scholastic, $13.99, ages 4-8) by Walter Wick.

The award-winning illusion photographer marks the 10th anniversary of his “Walter Wick’s Optical Tricks’’ with a special edition of the mind-bending classic and this new puzzle release out for Halloween. The zoom-in, 12-scene Halloween narrative invites sharp eyes to search a cloud-shrouded moonscape for a wizard and a craggy castle for a lizard’s tongue.

“Bone Soup’’ (Houghton Mifflin, $16, ages 4-8) written and illustrated by Cambria Evans.

Playfully paranoid townsfolk hide their most precious pantry staples when a part-skeleton named Finnigin hits town on Hallows Night. With his eating stool, spoon and large mouth, Finnigin kicks off a retelling of the stone soup folktale with a magic bone and some stewed eyeballs.

“Cat Nights’’ (HarperCollins, $16.99, ages 3-6) written and illustrated by Jane Manning.

Ever wonder why cats have nine lives? Manning bases her witch Felicity on an Irish legend that lends insight. We meet Felicity on her 263rd birthday, the year she gets to fulfill her life’s ambition: find out what it’s like to be a cat.

“Vunce Upon a Time’’ (Chronicle Books, $16.99, ages 4-8) by J.otto Seibold and Siobhan Vivian.

Dagmar the boy vampire doesn’t get out of the castle much. He’s shy, and he’s a vegetarian so he doesn’t need to forage beyond his moonlit garden. But he’s also a candy-holic. So when a little skeleton turns him on to a thing called Halloween that has humans handing out sweets, he overcomes his fear of the living.