'Twas Halloween Night

Young Jorlyn’s night of trick-or-treating reveals some shocking surprises right in her own Brooklyn neighborhood in this rhyming poem destined to become a holiday classic like Clement C. Moore’s poem “The Night Before Christmas.”

Author’s note: “Once I imagined the story of young Jorlyn’s adventure, I decided to describe it in rhyming verse. Why? Because rhyme is fun. Because rhyme is magical. Because everyone likes rhyme. (Or, at least, nobody doesn’t like rhyme.) Both Robert Frost and John Lennon insisted on it. Rap depends on it. Children adore it. Rhyme enchants; rhyme soothes. Rhyme, despite its constant promise of a predictable pattern, perennially surprises and delights.

I wrote “’Twas Halloween Night” with a mind towards how Dickens, in his great holiday story, makes sure both to comment on society and to suggest ways in which we, as its members, might make it better. Thus, Jorlyn’s experience, like Scrooge’s, leads her to a greater understanding of her human family and her responsibility to it. Years ago, when I first began working on the poem, I had in mind the need for my own little boy to be aware of, and sensitive to, the world around him. How was I to know that years later, that need—on his part as well as all of ours—would be greater than ever?”

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