Halloween is almost here, and all GalleyCat readers should be planning their literary costume ideas. Below, we’ve collected five obsessive and brilliant costumes based on books or comic books.
What’s the best literary Halloween costume you’ve ever seen? Share all your ideas at the handy #literarycostumes hashtag created by Random House last year. They’ve already started a Pinterest page and a Facebook conversation dedicated to more costume ideas.

1. Make a wolf suit like Max from Where the Wild Things Are. For the child in your life, you can honor the legacy of the great Maurice Sendak with a homemade kid’s costume from Running With Scissors (photo embedded above).


“I used a pair of his winter pajamas as the pattern, and a hood from one of his jackets. I wanted the costume to look like the illustrations from the book, so I made it with white fleece. I debated about whether to make actual button holes to fasten the front of the costume, or to just sew a zipper with decorative buttons. I ended up adding the zipper, out of practicality–to make it a little warmer, and easier to get on and off. For the whiskers, I used black pipe cleaners.”
2. Dress like a character from Game of Thrones. George R. R. Martin fans have been working on costumes all year, dressing as their favorite characters from the sprawling fantasy epic. Here’s more about how to make a Khal Drogo costume:
There was such a positive response that I’ve realized I’m going to be wearing this around for at least another six months to a year. One girl in particular stared openly with her mouth open for like 20 minutes before timidly asking for a photo :D Almost every other person or group of people flip out, and a good number of people asked for a photo. I now understand why people do cosplay and such … there’s such a huge positive reaction to it, its a horribly fun time; I had a great night!
More at Galley Cat. 

Footnote:
Being on holiday in NYC these past two weeks has really brought home to me what a major celebration Halloween is here in the US. We have seen piles of large orange pumpkins outside shops and in farmers; markets and have noticed at least six pop-up Halloween stores selling masks and cards and all sorts of other stuff. It is probably a reasonably significant economic event as well as a lot of fun for many kids.
It has never really caught on in NZ and I think that we should keep it that way.