Notes from Candice Ransom

Pumpkin Day!

pumpkin day

Welcome my latest book!  Pumpkin Day is my first pre-K reader, about a family that visits a pumpkin patch.  Erika Meza did the cheerful, autumn-perfect illustrations.

I never went to a pumpkin patch when I was a kid.  We raised our own!  Pie pumpkins (smaller, for cooking) were grown next to the corn in our big back garden.  But pie pumpkins were too small to be interesting.  I wanted to plant a giant Big Max pumpkin.

great-pumpkin-web

One year my stepfather got some seeds.  He wasn’t sure, but he thought Big Max seeds were in the mix.  Like Jack in “Jack and the Beanstalk,” I planted them, fingers crossed.

pumpkin-field-web

In order to raise one big pumpkin, you have to pinch back the others to give the big one room.  One baby pumpkinling seemed to hold promise.  I tended it with care.

two-pumpkins-web

By September, my pumpkin seemed to have a gland problem, as we say in the South.  Was it my imagination or was the pumpkin longer than it was round?  Maybe that was a temporary stage.  I still pictured myself rolling my giant pumpkin across the yard to our house.  I’d carve the biggest jack o’lantern ever!

pumpkin-patch-workers-web

Busy with school, I forgot about my pumpkin for several weeks.  Then one day I walked through the weedy patch.  The pumpkin should be big and round and orange by now but where was it?

inside-pumpkins-web

I nearly tripped over it.  My “pumpkin” was big, all right.  Only it wasn’t orange and it wasn’t a pumpkin.  I had grown a gourd the size and shape of a baseball bat.

swan-gourd-web

I carried my giant pale-green gourd to the back porch.  “Some Big Max,” I said in disgust.  Halloween was almost here and I had no pumpkin to carve.  Living in the country, you learned to make do.  So with a marker I drew a face on one end of the gourd and propped it up on our front porch.

When Halloween was over, I brought the gourd into my bedroom. There it stayed until its pale green skin turned soft and my mother made me throw it out.

pumpkin-girl-web

Now when I visit the pumpkin patch, I’m tempted, like the boy in the story, to haul away the biggest pumpkin I can find.  Instead, I bring home one “just my size.”

 

 

 

 

8 thoughts on “Pumpkin Day!”

  1. Congratulations on the book!

    Great story and pictures. When I was young, I grew small gourds for Fall decorations and loved the colors and shapes.

    When I was older, I tried to grow pumpkins in a small yard for my young children. The small townhouse yard soon was over taken by vines which
    grew like Kudzu. I had to pull them up to save the the neighbors yards.

    Reply
    • Hi! Later I tried growing Big Max pumpkins (as an adult). I let the weeds get away from me and those vines took over the world! Does anything spread faster than pumpkin vines?

      Reply

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