PUMPKIN DAY, PUMPKIN NIGHT

paper 0-8027-8697 Rockwell’s story of a young boy searching for the perfect pumpkin is more of a meditation than a story to evoke the spirit of a season. A boy is in pursuit of the perfect pumpkin: “big and round and orange as a setting sun.” At the farmer’s market he searches until he discovers just the right one, which had rolled off to one side: “I think it was waiting there just for me.” He takes it home and then, with his mother handling the knife, they craft a fine jack-o’-lantern that glows mysteriously in the night. Halsey’s pretty paper sculptures give the story visual snap, with their intriguing shadow play and sharp relief. Rockwell’s occasional stabs at seasonal atmospherics—the smell of pumpkins baking (the mother has bought ten little ones for a pie), apples ripening, the turning leaves—only falteringly conjure an autumnal mood. (Picture book. 3-7)