Pumpkin Moon. This item is unavailable.Pumpkin Moon

As the trick-or-treaters settle down for bed, the jack-o'-lanterns get off their porches and set out for a great big party in the country with a cast of colorful ghosts and witches.

Gr 1-4-Minimal text and boldly painted views follow the nighttime antics of jack-o'-lanterns and costumes-come-to-life after their trick-or-treating owners are fast asleep in their beds. In the opening scene, children busily carve their pumpkins and paint finishing touches on their costumes. Spare bits of narrative alternate with wordless scenes, fully painted on sturdy paper. Trick-or-treating is quickly done. "Midnight comes-," the children's Halloween paraphernalia spring into action. "It's party time! And away they go-." The night flight through the woods, over the highway and into the city is cheerily eerie, and very much in the spirit of Arthur Yorinks's Tomatoes from Mars (HarperCollins, 1997) and David Wiesner's Tuesday (Clarion, 1991). The swirl of grinning pumpkins sweeps in a long stream across a deeply shaded orange sky, pulled toward the largest jack-o'-lantern of them all. "It's a pumpkin moon!" As morning dawns readers see falling pumpkins through a plane window, past the face of a sleeping passenger, and the puzzled children wake to find their still smoking jack-o'-lantern on the windowsill and the morning newspaper carrying headlines about pumpkin aliens. It's a jolly, pretty tame night out, with only a startled truck driver for humor, but children will likely enjoy the familiar scenario of the nightlife of homely, inanimate things. The foil-paper pumpkin on the jacket is a catchy introduction, and the strong visuals with few words will work well for group sharing.

Margaret Bush, Simmons College, Boston

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

A British team, Preston (The Lonely Scarecrow) and Bartram (Pinocchio), reinvents David Wiesner's Tuesday with grimacing jack-o-lanterns and a hellfire orange gleam. At midnight on October 31, weird things defy gravity. When trick-or-treaters fall fast asleep, "It's party time! And away they go." Flying pumpkins, accompanied by empty Halloween costumes, terrorize a trucker and leave sidewalk splatters the next morning. Despite accomplished illustrations, this volume lacks Tuesday's finely tuned mystery and mischief. Ages 6-10.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Ages 4-8. Children familiar with David Wiesner's Tuesday (1991) will recognize some similarities in this Halloween offering. As in Tuesday, strange things begin happening on a certain date, in this case at midnight on October 31. Three siblings are asleep when their jack-o-lantern rises from the windowsill and joins hundreds of jack-o-lanterns, witches, ghosts, and ghouls flying over fields, through woods, and into the city. The children's costumes have also come alive, as has a dragon from a poster in their bedroom. Little ones will enjoy keeping track of the costumes and the dragon as the pages turn and get a kick out of a man, drawers around his knees, fleeing a restroom trailed by flying pumpkins. The action culminates when the pumpkin revelers spy the huge jack-o-lantern moon rising in the sky--a pumpkin moon. Some will find this too derivative, but others won't care; they'll just like the surreal story and the humorous visual details. Shelley Townsend-Hudson
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