From My Reading Chair…
No Stem, All Hope. Urgh!
Texture, texture, texture! Lucy Ruth Cummins gives us a city Halloween that feels scuffed, printed, shadowy and completely alive. The restraint and intention in her palette hit me immediately: black and cream everywhere, then pops of pumpkin orange and sharp green like sour candy for your eyeballs. Gawj.
The cityscapes are busy, but many of the people are silhouettes. We can peek into windows, follow the crowds, wonder about the lives moving past Stumpkin’s little patch of pavement and project ourselves into those spaces. There’s one window scene with an almost Hopper-esque ache to it: someone set apart from the glowing life around them. (Oof. A subtle glimpse of the feeling we’re about to sit with…)
There at the centre of it all is Stumpkin the pumpkin, still hoping to be chosen this Halloween. The gentleness Cummins creates around him melts my heart. Stumpkin is a very good pumpkin. A pumpkin I would defend with entirely unreasonable ferocity.
Cummins returns to familiar compositions, anchoring us as small changes mark the passing of time and our feelings build alongside Stumpkin’s. Then, in one of the best visual spreads I’ve witnessed, we see the world as Stumpkin does. No, we LITERALLY look out through the pumpkins’ eyes. (GAHD! Cummins, you cruel genius!) Suddenly the city feels enormous, and being seen feels like the biggest task in the world. That shift turns a familiar street into a pumpkin-sized world of looking, longing and endless possibility.
I think *Stumpkin’s* secret weapon is its understanding of home. One by one, the other pumpkins are picked and find homes elsewhere. Stumpkin waits for someone to take him away too, only to become the star of the shop window where he has been all along. Home isn’t always the magical new thing we’re waiting for. Sometimes it’s the realisation that we already belong right here.
Excuse me while my heart carves itself into a pumpkin and my eyes cry pumpkin-spiced tears. Urgh.
There’s room to talk with children about visible difference, belonging and that horrible little fear that one unusual thing or quirk might make us less lovable. But *Stumpkin* is neither trite nor didactic. It’s subtle but powerful, my favourite way of accessing deeper themes and messages. However, you know I’m ludicrously emotional, so you may have a perfectly normal reaction to this book!
Signature Lucy Ruth Cummins visual storytelling: bold, textural, clever and enormously emotive, with not a saccharine moment in sight.
Creep on Reading, Pumpkins!