The Best Pumpkin

Hi, readers! Thanks for stepping into Colleen’s Cozy Book Corner today. The book I am exploring with you this time is perfect as we move into county fair season! It’s called The Best Pumpkin and was written by Michelle Dalton. It was illustrated by Max Stasiuk, and if that name sounds familiar, it’s probably because Max has illustrated many of our books here at PVB, one of them being Reginald the Stinky Dog from our inaugural Cozy Book Corner column in April! Max’s art is always fun to look at and quite imaginative. While he has his own recognizable style, his drawings are unique and special for each book he illustrates. Such is the case here. 

The Best Pumpkin follows Sally the Cow and her delightful misunderstanding involving a county fair, a pumpkin, and a guinea pig. The illustrations of Sally, with her head of hair that looks like a tousled toupee, and Pumpkin, the ever-affable guinea pig, will make you smile with each turn of the page.

The plot of the story is clever and humorous, taking advantage of the confusion of a play on words. Pumpkin is the name of a cute orange guinea pig, and it’s also the type of squash that Billy and his farmer father plan to enter for a prize at the fair. When they talk about winning a blue ribbon for their pumpkin and hope it grows a little bigger before its debut in two weeks, Sally misunderstands and thinks they mean Pumpkin the guinea pig! How would a cow know about pumpkin contests after all?! She devotes herself to getting Pumpkin the guinea pig clean and spiffy and fattening him up so he is “big and round and orange.” Just like, knowing readers mirthfully will think, a pumpkin growing on the vine. This is comedy at its most droll—a jolly delight for any early reader!