From The Vines

Cooler nights the past week have hinted at the nearness of autumn.  There's not as much birdsong in the air in the mornings signaling the beginning of their migration south for the winter.  Farmers' markets are filled with an abundance of summer-harvest fruits, vegetables, flowers, honey and other homemade delicacies.

Pumpkins are ripening on their vines. It's that special time of year to make selections for celebrations of Halloween.  Pick a Pumpkin (Candlewick Press, July 9, 2019), a companion to Pick a Pine Tree (Candlewick Press, September 19, 2017) written by Patricia Toht with illustrations by Jarvis follows a family from seeking the perfect pumpkins to strolling through their neighborhood on a spooky October 31st.

Pick a pumpkin 
from the patch---

tall and lean
or short and fat.

There is an abundance of colors of orange, some white and green, too.  This mom and her children fill their wagon with pumpkins of all shapes and sizes.  They take a break to sip on an autumn drink and munch on crispy, candy-coated apples.

Once home every speck of dirt is removed from their chosen gourds.  An area is made ready for carving and tools, utensils and bowls are brought outside.  A few neighbor children join the fun. 

Cutting, pulling and scooping clear the canvas.  Let the creativity begin!  Eyes wide with wonder or suspicious slits and noses form above mouths of happy grins or grumbling growls.  Soon all the pumpkins are completed to perfection.

Next the outside of the house with the help of dad is adorned with webs and web-weavers, shimmering ghosts, skeletons and swooping bats.  All the children don their costumes cheerfully chattering.  There's a witch, a mummy and is that a cute little pumpkin in mom's arms?  Those perfect pumpkin prizes are carried to their places; now glowing, the jack-o-lanterns are sidewalk sentries.  There's only one thing left to do, and it's done with exuberance.


Author Patricia Toht welcome us with her masterful use of poetic language, punctuation and pauses into the marvelous atmosphere of preparing for this holiday.  Her sentences with their embedded rhymes are like stanzas in a melody leading us into this night full of magic and mystery.  Alliterative phrases will have readers ready to move.  Here is a passage.

Lumpy chunks. Sticky strings.
Clumpy seeds. Guts and things.
With a spoon, scrape sides neatly.
Clean the inside out completely.
           Now all together . . .


Across the open and matching dust jacket and book case are pumpkins and one jack-o-lantern of every shape and size and shade.  The color palette radiates Halloween with hues of orange, purple, blue, green and a spooky white.  The costumed siblings can hardly contain their delight among the webs, spiders, bats, black cats, scurrying and curious mice, birds, autumn leaves and a wide-eyed ghost positioned around the ISBN on the back.

On the opening endpapers is a vast autumn sky with the birds shown on the jacket and cover flying over a nearly setting sun. On the closing endpapers it's the same scene with leafless branches and shrubs along the bottom and the huge sky above.  Now that sky is darkened, and the sun is replaced with a full moon.  Is that who I think it is riding her broom across the moon?  The birds have been replaced with bats.

The verso and title pages are a stunning work of art by illustrator Jarvis.  A row of autumn trees spans both pages with a windmill on the far right.  In front of them is a three-rail farm fence.  We move in close for the lower half of the illustration.  Muted-fall foliage is scattered on the ground.  On the right two large pumpkins are growing from vines.  Three crows, one on the left, watch and caw. 

Rendered in pencil, chalk, and paint and colored digitally all the illustrations are double-page pictures.  The choices of color for all the elements, including backgrounds which accentuate the other details, are absolutely splendid. Every visual is full of anticipation and animation.  The expressions on the people's faces convey pure excitement.  There are birds, mice and a black cat in nearly every picture. (Readers are going to love looking for those creatures.)  Near the pumpkin patch are two shops; one named Jarvis Art Supplies and the other Patty's Book Shop.  You won't believe the number on the side of the wagon the family is using at the farm.

One of my many, many favorite illustrations is when the family and neighborhood children are standing in front of the pumpkin, now a glowing jack-o-lantern.  The background is hues of blue darkening to deeper greens near the bottom.  Dad, on the left as a vampire, has his hand resting on mom's shoulder as she stands on the right.  She's wearing devil horns and holding the baby garbed in a pumpkin costume.  Left to right are two children on either side of the gutter wearing their costumes.  One is holding the cat.  In a low arc at the bottom is the top of the jack-o-lantern with its stem in the gutter and extending out on either side.  All their faces show awe.  They are radiant from the light of the jack-o-lantern.


If you are looking for the ideal pumpkin or Halloween title, then this book, Pick a Pumpkin written by Patricia Toht with illustrations by Jarvis comes highly recommended.  I can't imagine a storytime without this title as a selection.  You'll definitely want to have a copy in your personal and professional collections.

To discover more about Patricia Toht and Jarvis and their other work, please follow the links attached to their names to access their websites.  Patricia Toht has accounts on Instagram and Twitter.   You can find Jarvis on Instagram and Twitter, too.  At the publisher's website and at Penguin Random House you can view interior images.

"Orange" You Going To Pick Me?

It's a term of endearment.  It's a mode of transportation in a popular fairy tale.  It's rich in fiber and low in carbohydrates.  It is a popular and main ingredient in food especially during the autumn season.  Scientifically, it's known as a fruit but there are those who argue it's a vegetable. 

As October 31st draws nearer, grocery stores and farmers' markets are featuring it prominently.  Children can hardly wait to find the best one.  Stumpkin (Atheneum Books for Young Readers, July 24, 2018) written and illustrated by Lucy Ruth Cummins (A Hungry Lion or A Dwindling Assortment of Animals) is about a pumpkin who believes his perfection is flawed.

It was a few days before Halloween.  Outside a little shop in a big city, a shopkeeper placed some pumpkins on the shelves.

Immediately a little girl stopped, looked at the pumpkins and walked away with one in her arms.  Those still on the shelves wondered what was going to happen to their companion.  That evening they had an answer. 

In one of the apartment buildings on the other side of the street, a jack-o-lantern glowed in a window.  The pumpkin turned jack-o-lantern had fared fantastically according to his buddies.  They could hardly wait for the same fate except for one.  He realized he had no stem just a stump.  He was literally pumpkin perfection except for this one detail.

As it got closer and closer to Halloween more and more pumpkins left the shelves and filled windows with happy grins across the street at night.  As each pumpkin left Stumpkin knew he would be the best jack-o-lantern of all.  Would his turn to leave be tomorrow?

People walked by and picked pumpkins.  The shop keeper's cat settled on top of Stumpkin.  A child picked him!  YES! Oh, no!  He changed his mind when a dog did what dogs do around cats. (sigh)  Soon it was just a gourd and Stumpkin on the shelves.  It was now Halloween day.  A boy walked up and picked one of them.  You won't believe which one he picked.  Someone got a new home that night.  Someone else was already in their special space.


When Lucy Ruth Cummins writes a story you know she will take something ordinary and expand your thinking.  In her capable hands it becomes extraordinary.  In this narrative she smoothly moves from narrator to the thoughts of the pumpkins and the thoughts of Stumpkin.  She builds descriptive reasoning into the tale which leads us to humor and the glowing, grinning conclusion.  Here is the bottom portion of a passage.

Poor little . . . Stumpkin.
Still there was plenty to like about Stumpkin.
He was a handsome pumpkin---as orange as a traffic cone.
He was as big as a basketball---and twice as round!
Stem-schmem!
Who know?
Some people might even prefer a stemless pumpkin.


Could there be more excellent colors for a book about a pumpkin and Halloween?  The rich black on the dust jacket extends flap edge to flap edge. On the left it's entirely like a moonless midnight except for a sliver of Stumpkin in the lower right-hand corner.  And without even opening the book case we know Stumpkin is not happy about his physical state. The placement of his eyes and angle of his eyebrows conveys his emotional mood.  The texture of the paper for the jacket is rough like tiny, tiny weaving. 

On the book case we move in closer to Stumpkin on the front.  We see a hint of his stem but our eyes are drawn to his eyes and lots of orange.  A wide black band extends from the spine.  Stumpkin is also highlighted on the back but he is much different; much happier.  On the matching opening and closing endpapers in orange and cream are rows of bricks like the walls of the apartment buildings.

Lucy Ruth Cummins begins her pictorial story on the title page with a truck driving left to right, almost off the page.  The back is filled with pumpkins and one gourd.  Rendered in gouache, pencil, ink, and brush marker the images invite interpretation. Many of the elements are in shades of black and gray to accentuate the pumpkins.  We never see details on the people.  Details are seen in other items; the signs on the shop windows and door and the plants and fruits on display. (Take note of those fruits, page to page.)

The perspective changes from larger views of the shop and apartment buildings across the street to close-ups of the shelves.  This allows us to see the eyes of the cat and the pumpkins as their expressions shift.  The change in visual sizes, double-page to full page, elevates the emotions Stumpkin is feeling.  It also surprises us with six very special pages toward the end which are masterful.

One of my many favorite illustrations spans a full page crossing the gutter to the left. It's a close up of the shelves outside the shop.  It draws our attention to three shelves.  There are four elements on each shelf; nine pumpkins, a single gourd, Stumpkin and the black cat with brilliant green eyes.  All the eyes are looking at Stumpkin.  He is most definitely worried.  He has just noticed his lack of a stem. 


Is this a stellar choice for a Halloween read aloud?  It certainly is!  Is this a super-duper choice for reminding us imperfections in our minds are likely perfections to others?  Yes, it is!  Stumpkin written and illustrated by Lucy Ruth Cummins is a book you need to add to your professional and personal collections.  It is destined to be a holiday classic.

To learn more about Lucy Ruth Cummins and her other work, please visit her website by following the link attached to her name.  At the publisher's website you can view interior images and portions of the story.  Lucy Ruth Cummins maintains an account on Twitter and Instagram. 

Pumpkin Potential

It's that time of year when the stalls and tables at farmers' markets, are replete with the color orange.  Small, tall, round, squat and large, pumpkins form into an assortment of shapes and sizes.  People scan the rows looking for one, two, three or more pumpkins which will be used as an ingredient in a favorite recipe, an autumn display or as a spooky greeter for trick-or-treaters.

Some pumpkins are not for sale.  These pumpkins have been grown as part of a competition that circles the globe, the quest for the largest pumpkin.  Last year the biggest ever recorded was grown in Rhode Island.  It weighed 2009 pounds!  Author illustrator Wendell Minor's newest release, How BIG Could Your Pumpkin Grow? ( Nancy Paulsen Books, an imprint of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.) plants the "what if" seed taking readers on a marvelous journey.

At the pumpkin farm,
we pick the perfect pumpkin.
Some are little,
some are big,
and some are GIANT-sized.

From the farm to the festival, the pumpkins are getting bigger and bigger.  Skimming over the water as boats, people paddling toward a goal.  Knee-high to the legend and his ox of blue, pumpkins are growing.

If we had seeds, not ordinary seeds, but magic seeds, imagine the greatness these gourds could achieve.  We might see one among all the hot-air giants floating in the sky at the Balloon Festival in New Mexico.  We might see another standing watch along the sandy coast of North Carolina, light shining through a jack-o-lantern grin, matching the height of the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse.

From a bridge connecting one borough to another, to a historic oil field and on to the tallest roller coaster in the world, these pumpkins are traversing the country; their size ever increasing.  Washington, D.C., South Dakota and California are only three of fourteen stops on the tour.  Whether it's natural wonders carved by the hands of time or structures designed by the minds and hands of men and women, nothing is too great for the pumpkins coming from seeds charmed by one's imagination.


You can only wonder at the fun Wendell Minor had researching and writing the narrative for this book.  For each of the places showcased, a different synonym of big is used in the sentences.  Light, informal and with a slight cadence each sentence, each paragraph, makes us feel as if we have traveled to the same time and place as the pumpkins.   Readers are treated to the descriptive power of word play and the creative use of language.  Here is a single sample.

Would it rise as
HIGH
as hot-air balloons
at the 
fall fiesta fair?


You can feel the exuberance of the two children atop the enormous pumpkin on the front of the matching jacket and cover.  The warm autumnal colors found there glow throughout the title.   All the two-page illustrations rendered in gouache and watercolor issue a friendly invitation to readers.  Come.  Let's see how big these pumpkins can grow.  Let's see where they will appear next.

Wendell Minor is a master illustrator, bringing each of the visited vistas, from their respective places on the map into the reader's world.  His lively paintings picture exquisite details, the label on the scarecrow's bib overalls, the rower wearing a pumpkin hat, the vine on a pumpkin top, a tiny U. S. flag on the bridge, eyes on monuments moved to look at a pumpkin or a small plane pulling a Pumpkin for President banner. For each of the "big" words he changes font type as a reflection of the area in which the pumpkin sits. The smiles and gasps of awe are an ode to happiness, to the greatness not only of the pumpkins' sizes but to the points of interest in our United States.  One of my favorite illustrations is of the Balloon Fiesta in New Mexico.  The vivid colors, the perspective focusing on the balloons, the wide-eyed pumpkin with all the much smaller people and tents below, make me feel as if I am there.


Wendell Minor informs, delights, questions and entertains us with his words and illustrations in How BIG Could Your Pumpkin Grow?  You will be hard pressed to find a better title that encourages readers to envision places of interest they might visit, to explore word choice and to develop their powers of creativity all while appreciating pumpkins.  Additional information about each of the national places of interest is included at the book's end.  To view additional artwork found in this title visit Wendell Minor's website by following the link embedded in his name above.  I would pair this book with The Pumpkin Circle: A Story of a Garden by George Levenson with photographs by Shmuel Thaler.

Enjoy the book trailer plus another video about large, very large pumpkins.