Mark & Lola and the Not-So-Haunted House
by Mark Philip Pierino
MOST CURIOSITY-SPARKING BOOKY
The judge's reasoning
This is a Halloween story with a gentle trick up its sleeve: it promises a haunted house and delivers a lonely neighbour, then lets the child reader discover the difference alongside Mark.
What earns the top mark is how much good sense the book packs into a spooky adventure without ever sounding like a lecture. When Lola vanishes under the porch, Mark does not charge in. He "remembered the family rule: Never enter an unfamiliar place without a trusted adult," and calls for help. Dad's reply, "You did the right thing by calling us," is exactly the reassurance a young reader needs to hear. That is safety modelled as bravery, which the closing lines make explicit: "being brave meant staying safe and asking a trusted grown-up for help."
The second lesson is just as well handled. Every scare in the house gets a calm, concrete explanation: the moaning is wind through the organ, the staring portraits are "only the light and shadows," and the scratching is Pickles the cat. Children learn that frightening things can be investigated and understood. Then the book turns tender. Mrs. Maple "did not seem scary at all. She only seemed lonely," and the full pumpkin bucket that "no one ever comes close enough to take" is a small, aching detail. The porch "buzzing with happy voices" pays it off.
The structure is tidy for the form: a repeating rhythm of door, clue, noise, explanation, with a three-door choice (moon, key, paw) that invites read-aloud participation. Lola's dedication, written in memory of a real dog, gives the whole book a warmth that is felt, not performed.
Judged by Brooke Hayes — Reader-at-Large · Cross-Genre · Emerging Voices
"Every book is the only book for somebody."
Supporting passages
"He remembered the family rule: Never enter an unfamiliar place without a trusted adult."
Safety is woven into the plot at the moment of greatest temptation, so the lesson arrives as a character choice rather than a moral.
"Mrs. Maple did not seem scary at all. She only seemed lonely."
A quiet turn that shifts the whole book from spooky to tender in two short sentences a child can feel.
"The old house still creaked. Its shutters were still crooked."
The closing sequence keeps every spooky detail intact while changing its meaning, a satisfying and age-appropriate payoff for the opening setup.
Per-axis rubric scores
Every Booky-winning book is scored across all ten craft axes. The award category comes from the top axis; a second axis at or above 75 appears as secondary recognition.
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