Leda Schubert * Writer of Picture Books

Oct 30, 2010 6:28 AM EDT

You can rest easy. We stopped trying to track you two down when the statute of limitations ran out on your over-aged trick-or-treating.

- The Halloween Police

Oct 30, 2010 7:01 AM EDT

Thanks! I knew you were out there, and I cannot begin to express my relief.

- Leda Schubert

Aug 20, 2011 4:03 PM EDT

I was easily frightened as a kid (as you might remember, Leda, having known me since I was six) and my father warned me never to read "The Monkey's Paw" if I came across it. I in turn warned my daughter not to read it. So there is my daughter in second or third grade at Somerset School when the teacher announces a special treat: an itinerant storyteller has arrived to tell a story. You can guess which one. It's like the story of Thetis and Achilles, or Frigga and Baldur, coupled with the story of the appoinment in Samarra -- you try your best to protect your kid, and you get tripped up anyway. But how thoughtless can you be, to inflict "The Monkey's Paw," of all things, on a bunch of little children, when the world is full of stories as wonderful as "Elsie Piddock Skips in Her Sleep"?

- Peter from Camp Lakeside