Happy Fall! Like lots of Upper Valley families, mine used to sit outside on the porch once it got chilly and read about pumpkins. This is the time of year I find myself wanting to read these old childhood classics about harvest season, and I couldn’t resist going back to a few of my family’s favorites last week.
There is a wealth of beautiful picture books about New England pumpkin season. They are cozy and comforting and perfect for a fall evening. Whether you have children to read them to or not, I recommend grabbing a cup of hot cider and sitting outside in the glorious fall evening light and giving these two perfect pumpkin picture books a read.
Pumpkins: A Story for a Field by Mary Lyn Ray
How to save a field? With pumpkins of course! When a man finds his favorite field for sale, he decides he must find a way to save it from development. He fills the field with seeds, and grows four hundred sixty-one thousand, two hundred and twelve pumpkins. He sends them all over the world on trucks, boats, planes, and flying carpets to raise the money he needs to buy the field. He saves some seeds, and while he could plant more pumpkins to make himself rich, he already has everything he needs. He has a beautiful field and home, and somewhere, someone else might need the seeds to save another field.
Pumpkin Moonshine by Tasha Tudor
Apparently Tasha Tudor’s first picture book, Pumpkin Moonshine is the story of Sylvie’s hunt for the perfect pumpkin to carve as her Hallowe’en Pumpkin Moonshine. It is a darling story about her pumpkin rolling away down the hill and through the farm, causing all kinds of chaos. Once it’s caught, she and her grandfather carve it up to look fierce and horrid, as all pumpkin moonshines should.
H Rooker is the Bookstore Manager at Still North Books and Bar, and a lifelong New Englander.