Find the center of one of the smaller pieces of cheesecloth. Use scissors to carefully create a hole.
Thread the string from the balloon through the hole, and drape the cheesecloth over the balloon.
Repeat the process with different-size pieces of cheesecloth to vary the lengths. Four layers of cheesecloth is enough.
Add a face to your balloon! Cut your duct tape into the shapes you want for the eyes and mouth to create a spooky ghost face. Tape the shapes onto the cheesecloth-covered balloon. If you don’t have duct tape, you can use the black sharpie to draw the face on the ghost.
You now have your own ghost! Ask a grown-up to hang it for you. They look super cool hanging from trees, especially when the wind blows. Whoooooo! Whoooooo!
Create Your Own Fright
Do you have a fright to help you when you get scared? If not, do you want to make your own?
Here are some things to think about.
What’s her name?
What special powers does she have?
Does she have horns or anything special, like big crazy teeth or extra eyes?
Can she fly?
What bugs does she like to eat?
Now, write a story about how your fright scares away a kid’s nightmare.
Then, with the help of a grown-up, visit us at thepinkaboos.com/create-a-fright to share your story! Bitterly will pick the coolest and creepiest fright. YOUR FRIGHT could become a character in the next Pinkaboos book!
Belladonna’s Bat Facts
Often thought of as “spooky” creatures, bats are actually pretty cute when you see them up close. They are fuzzy and have soft bodies, and they look like little mice with wings. In fact, the German word for “bat” is fledermaus, which means “flutter mouse.”
Bats eat one of the peskiest bugs in the world—the mosquito! They are so good at eating mosquitoes that they can eat up to one thousand in just one hour!
Bats fly in the dark without crashing into things by using a special ability called echolocation. Bats make noises, and the sound waves bounce off objects (an echo). They can tell the distance of objects by how quickly the sound waves bounce back to them—if a sound wave doesn’t bounce back right away, they know they can safely fly forward. Now that’s cool.
Some people think bats are blind, but they actually have very good eyesight.
Although there are more than one thousand different species of bats, our favorite is the little brown bat. But there’s some bad news, Pinkafans. They’re endangered! That means there are less of them every year, and now there are so few of them that scientists worry they could disappear completely.
Other bats are in trouble, too! One of the biggest problems comes from them losing their homes, or roosts.
What Can You Do?
Bats need to have a place to call home—and those places are quickly running out. Bats love tight spaces to crowd into, and they use their combined body heat to keep warm!
You can build them their very own house, but you’ll definitely need the help of a grown-up. There are many places online that show you how, but it can get tricky. There are also places that sell them already built so all your grown-up has to do is hang one up. A great place to hang them is somewhere with lots of trees near water, or if your parents like the idea of having bats around their house to eat the mosquitoes, they might want to hang it up near your home!
A good bat house will be five to twenty feet above the ground. Their favorite places are under the eaves of a roof or on a tree trunk. Your grown-up may need a ladder for this!
About the Authors
Jake Gosselin grew up in Canada, where he spent his youth battling frost giants, tricking evil spirits, and talking to wolves. None of this can be proven, but it should be noted that a frost giant hasn’t been seen since 1982.
As a child, Jake had numerous fears, including but not limited to zombies, vampires, ghosts, demons, gelatinous cubes, goblins, large insects, small insects, biting insects, horses, geese, monkeys, grouchy adults, and Brussels sprouts.
Now that Jake is an “adult,” all of his fears are crammed into a deep corner of his mind. Occasionally he lets them out to play and writes down what he sees, which apparently makes him a writer. He lives in California with his wife, Laura; daughter, Molly; bearded dragon, Dezi; cat, Mittens; hamster, Peanut; and dog, Chewbacca.
Laura Gosselin grew up in England and used to stare out her classroom window so much that her teachers called her a daydreamer. Little did they know she was thinking up fun stories she could tell one day. Or perhaps she was sleeping with her eyes open.
When she was little, Laura was afraid of sharks in swimming pools and large bugs with wings. Now that she’s a grown-up, Laura is afraid of laundry, bills, and whiny children. She is also super afraid of spiders. The bigger and hairier they are, the louder she screams.
After going to school in New York, living in Canada, and finally settling in Southern California, Laura has come to realize that only three things in life really matter: 1) happiness; 2) happiness; and finally, after much consideration, 3) happiness.
About the Illustrator
A1993 graduate of the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, Billy Kelly has been designing children’s books since before you were born, if you were born after 1993.
In 2004, Billy and his wife, Jacqueline, launched their very own design studio, YAY! Design, in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, and there was much rejoicing.
Since 2009, Billy has been writing and recording songs for kids. National Public Radio has praised Billy’s quirky children’s music for its “endearingly oddball sense of humor.” His songs can be heard on SiriusXM Satellite Radio and on radio stations all across the land, assuming you have the radio turned on and tuned in to the right station at the exact right time. Billy was nominated for a 2016 Grammy for Trees, a children’s album he recorded with South Carolina songwriter Molly Ledford. Oh—he is a stand-up comedian, too!
is a registered trademark of Robert Simon; Yay! Design, LLC; and L & G Creative Resources, Inc. dba SupperTime Entertainment. The Pinkaboos concept and look was created by Gerry Renert, Billy Kelly, and Robert Simon.
The Pinkaboos: Belladonna and the Nightmare Academy copyright © 2016 by Jake Gosselin and Laura Gosselin. Illustrations copyright © 2016 by Billy Kelly. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of reprints in the context of reviews.
Andrews McMeel Publishing
a division of Andrews McMeel Universal
1130 Walnut Street, Kansas City, Missouri 64106
www.andrewsmcmeel.com
ISBN: 978-1-4494-8420-0
Library of Congress Control Number: 2015959875
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