Halloween Hideout

by Annie Barrows

Like the Friendship Club, Ivy and Bean captures that specific magic of kids figuring out how to be friends despite their differences—one's anxious and careful, the other's a chaos agent. Blackall has the same gift Bryant does for showing how a friendship survives a misunderstanding, and the Halloween-adjacent spooky elements here come with genuine warmth rather than mean-spirited scares.

by Trenton Lee Stewart

This one's from 2007 like your book, but it operates at a slightly higher reading level—perfect if you're ready to grow into something with more plot complexity. Where Halloween Hideout focuses on resolving one conflict between friends, Stewart weaves together four kids with different fears and strengths into a genuine mystery, showing how friendship means learning to trust people who scare you or confuse you.

by Mari Lu Robbins

Published in 1967, this is my sneaky recommendation—it's got that same gentle exploration of friendship and self-discovery, but it's set in the Metropolitan Museum of Art with two kids on the run. Konigsburg writes about how people surprise each other and how running away from something (like Ginger running from her fear) sometimes means running toward understanding who you really are.

by Jeanne Birdsall

This is my genre-adjacent pick—it's contemporary realistic fiction rather than the lighter fantasy-touch of Halloween Hideout, but it's absolutely about what happens when friends hurt each other and have to navigate forgiveness and loyalty. Birdsall's four sisters feel like an extended Friendship Club, and she's brilliant at showing how fear (of losing a friend, of being left out) drives behavior more than malice ever does.

by Sara Pennypacker

Pennypacker has this wonderful ability to make a character who's constantly getting things wrong—accidentally hurting people's feelings, misunderstanding situations—feel completely lovable and real. Like Huckleberry Pie trying to help Ginger, Clementine means well but creates chaos, and the book's real heart is in how she figures out how to make amends and be a better friend, not just feel bad about what happened.