Do You Boo? West Bloomfield Mom Does

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A West Bloomfield mom who wrote the book on booing wants to build traditions and convince other families to do the same.

No, Kendra Montante, 40, is not rallying around the kind of booing that earns poor sportsmanship marks and technical fouls.

Rather, her book, “Booing: A Halloween Tradition,” encourages people to tiptoe as quietly as friendly ghosts through their neighborhoods, leave bags of treats on the doorstep, ring the doorbell and hide nearby as the surprise is revealed.

Each bag of treats contains a note encouraging the family to “boo” two more families, Montante told the Detroit Free Press.

Montante, a former teacher, fulfilled a longtime dream to write a children’s book with the enchanting story.

“I really didn’t know what it was,” Montante told the Free Press. “But my kids loved it. They thought it was so fabulous. After we went out and booed, my son said, ‘Can we boo more people? This is great.’ ”

Montante’s research showed that booing — also known as spooking, hobnob gobbling, ghosting and the phantom — is a tradition that dates back to the 1800s in different areas of the country.

So, with encouragement from her husband, Anthony Montante, she decided to write a children’s book about the not scary Halloween tradition.

She invested $20,000 to self-publish the book, illustrated by Nina Klymenno, and also manufacture a stuffed ghost her family named Wisp that is shipped with each book sold.

The book and kit sells for $29 on kendramontante.com and Amazon.com. It’s also available at a few local retail establishments, such as Toyology Toys, which has stores in West Bloomfield, Royal Oak and Howell; Basket Creations in Plymouth; and Detroit Kid City in Southfield.

Next year, Montante hopes to partner with a couple of large retailers in the endeavor.

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• In some areas of the country, kids tell jokes when trick-or-treating. In others, they play a harmless prank. What’s your Halloween tradition?

The characters in the book, Evan and Emma, are based on Montante’s children, Enzo, 8, and Ava, 3.

“The whole book is based on my family being booed for the first time, and us booing two other families. It’s really based on our experience,” Montante said. “The two children in the book have red hair, my kids have red hair. The mom in the book looks very similar to me.”

Montante said the book includes teachable moments about the value of a “pay-it-forward kind of thing,” not because children should expect something in return, but for the joy of making someone else smile.

Montante said she and her family plan to boo more than 75 families chosen at random in Metro Detroit this Halloween season.

“My kids keep asking, every night can we boo tonight, please? So we’ll do a little at a time,” she said. “It’s fun.”

And booing isn’t just for kids.

“I had three elderly people come up to me individually and tell me that they do it in their retirement homes,” Montante said. “And I thought, that’s awesome! So many teachers have said they boo in school, and I also learned that a lot of people do it in their offices at work. It really spans age ranges.”

» Photos via KendraMontante.com and Facebook