Fall Book Series: The Biggest Pumpkin Ever

Have I mentioned that I love Fall?  The weather is cooler, we've already made a visit to our first Harvest Festival of the year and I splurged on Starbucks Hot Cocoa mix from Costco.  We've also read some really great Fall themed books, including The Biggest Pumpkin Ever by Steven Kroll.

This book follows two mice, a house mouse and a field mouse, as they unknowingly care for and nurture the same pumpkin.  They both have their own idea for the pumpkin - the house mouse wants it to win the grand prize at the town pumpkin contest and the field mouse thinks it would make a great jack o'lantern.  In the end, they have both contributed to making it the biggest pumpkin ever and get to both enter it in the contest and carve it.

What I thought about the book:  It's a great story overall.  It's really fun in the beginning to see the two mice care for the same pumpkin and anticipate them finding out about each other.  The illustrations (by Jeni Bassett) are fun and engaging.  It's not a long story, but there are a lot of words on each page.  I think it's ideal for kids age 4 and up, but if I were reading it to a younger child I think I would just skim the story and kind of make it up as I went along and it would still be good.

What Jack thought about the book:  Jack thought it was a pretty good story, but he wasn't overly enthused about it.  He said his favorite page was the last page that shows the pumpkin carved into the biggest jack o'lantern ever.  (I think he also likes seeing his name in print, haha!)

What Colin thought about the book:  Well, true to form, I could barely get Colin to hold still long enough to listen.  He did manage to catch the part where the mice spread manure over the garden though, imagine that.  Jack asked me what manure is and of course them Colin wanted to see the poop. Sigh.  He also really loved the part where it took one hundred mice on motorcycles to drag the pumpkin into town.  Something about mice on motorcycles really cracked him up.

We got this book as a hand me down from a friend, but you can pick it up at your local library or on Amazon, where ranges in price from 97 cents to $4.99.