Pumpkin Orange, Pumpkin Round

A sweet, simple rhyming book that illustrates a cheerful cat family celebrating Hallowe’en. The text is brief, and the story is told mostly through the illustrations that portray a family of felines visiting a pumpkin patch, carrying their chosen pumpkins home in a wheelbarrow, carving them into Jack-o-Lanterns, getting dressed up and going out trick-or-treating.

The rhyming scheme is bouncy and fun, with only one odd hitch: “pumpkin chum / pumpkin mom”. Tara Anderson’s charming, bright illustrations are created with coloured pencil and acrylic glaze on watercolour paper and have a nostalgic feeling to them. There are sweet little moments that take place outside of the main narrative, such as when one of the younger cats gets distracted from pumpkin picking and chases a mouse which subsequently pops up somewhere or other on almost every page (could be a fun game to find where the mouse is hiding!).

I would raise the age recommendation up to kids five-years-old just for the last page in the back which is a how-to on carving your own Jack-o-Lantern (“You will need: A pumpkin, an adult helper…”). A fun, simple, festive book that families will love.