This is the best Halloween-themed illustration I've seen this year. It's from a 1958 issue of The Saturday Evening Post. Lief Peng's commentary about it on his blog, Today's Inspiration, is wonderful:
When I look at this illustration by John Falter, I'm reminded of the stripped-down environments Charles Schultz used to draw his Peanuts characters into during the early years of his strip: the shoebox houses, inconsequential trees and indoor/outdoor carpet lawns, devoid of landscaping, that represented 50's suburbia. Here Falter presents us with a more fully realized version of Charlie Brown's world.
John Falter(1910-1982) has never been one of the illustrators of the 50's that I really get worked up about. But here he has captured a quality of typical childhood experience that is so astute and understated that it is spectacular in its mundanity.
