A friendly request

As it is coming up to Halloween, I thought I would share a children’s story I wrote some time ago which has been published in an anthology of stories, but I have never been able to find an illustrator for it. It is a Halloween story for young children, which I am posting in the hope that someone out there who is a great illustrator and interpreter of words into images will add some pictures to it in time for Halloween. So here it is:

Jasper the teddy bear is soft and cuddly and lives with a little boy called Jack.  Jack loves Jasper very much and takes him to bed every night.  Jasper even has his own pair of striped pyjamas.  Every morning when Jack gets out of bed, he changes Jasper’s pyjamas for a jumper and trousers, and sits him on the window ledge, from where he can see everything in the street outside.

He can see Jack and his mummy leave the house, go down the path, out of the gate, and up the road to the bus stop.

He can see the milkman delivering milk from his milk float and the postman delivering letters and parcels from his van.

He can see the paperboy pushing newspapers through letterboxes.

He can see Mrs Green from next-door going to work and Mrs Smith from across the road taking her children to school.

Jasper waves to the people on the top decks of the buses and sometimes they wave back.  Once a week he even waves to the men on the dustcart who empty the rubbish bins.  Very occasionally, he waves to firemen on the big red fire engine on their way to and from the fire station.

One day, when the evenings had grown darker, Jasper was sitting in the window watching the street lamps light up.  He could see Mrs Green coming home from work with her heavy shopping bags, and the Smith children coming home with their mother.  The children were carrying pictures they had painted at school.  The buses had their lights on and most of the windows were steamed up, but Jasper still waved.

Suddenly he saw something that made his fur bristle and stand on end.  Coming along the road and past the front gate was a small ghost … then a vampire … followed by a witch… and a skeleton.  Not long after that Jasper saw a crowd of ghosts, witches, vampires, and a skeleton, come in the gate and up the path to the front door.

Jasper shouted at the top of his voice “Don’t let them in!”  But, of course, Jack’s mummy couldn’t hear him.

Jasper heard a lot of noise in the hall.  He was so scared that he put his paws over his ears and shut his eyes tight. But he could still hear footsteps coming up the stairs and the bedroom door slowly creaking open.

The light was switched on with a click and, although he was scared, Jasper just had to look.  In the light from the door he could see a skeleton coming towards him.  It had a skeleton face and bones instead of arms and legs.  Jasper had never seen a skeleton close up before and he started to shiver and shake.

The skeleton reached out, lifted Jasper up in the air … and gave him a big bear hug.  The skeleton face was removed, and there was Jack smiling at Jasper.

“Trick or treat!” he said.