RUNAWAY PUMPKINS

Excitement’s running high when students take a field trip to a pumpkin patch. Each child will pick a pumpkin, then return to school and decorate it. The trip is filled with cheery anticipation; the pumpkin patch offers many choices. On the ride back, however, the latches on the bus’s exterior storage bins loosen, and, unbeknownst to riders, the gathered gourds roll out onto streets, lawns, and everywhere; most are ruined. All’s not lost, however. Residents witness the fiasco and devise a plan to save the day. Back at school, the kids and teachers finally realize what happened and observe that only the enormous pumpkin strapped to the bus’s roof survived. Students collaborate to decorate it. But the best is yet to come. The kindly neighbors turn up with a bounty of treats they prepared from the salvaged pumpkin bits. This sweet, upbeat charmer’s bouncy rhymes roll along merrily and are thus nicely suited to the story’s theme—and satisfying conclusion: If life hands you smashed pumpkins, turn them into pumpkin pie, cake, cookies, etc. Illustrations are lively, childlike, and suffused with bright shades of autumnal orange. Both kids and adults are racially diverse; some children and adults wear glasses. A pumpkin cookie recipe appears in the backmatter.

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