From My Reading Chair…
Joy. That is the word which followed me through every page of We’re Going on a Pumpkin Hunt.
This is a bold, neon-bright helping of spooky-season fun: simple shapes, enormous colour pops and a familiar rhyme refitted with cats, cobwebs, bats, ghosts and one very large pumpkin.
The pared-back illustrations feel particularly well suited to the very youngest children. There is no need to untangle a crowded scene before the fun can begin; the colours announce themselves, the shapes are easy to recognise and the whole book feels ready to be performed.
And oh, does this want to be performed!
The cats go “meow, meow.” Cobwebs tickle with a “swish.” Bats “flap, flap,” while the haunted house grows wonderfully “creaky, squeaky.” Each new encounter gives small listeners a sound, an action or a fangtastic part to join in with.
The repeated structure does more than make the story easy to follow. It lets children know that their part is coming. They can anticipate the refrain, practise the noises, grow more confident joining in and become co-conspirators in the pumpkin hunt rather than politely sitting outside it.
Then the book gathers itself into a glorious crescendo: a ghostly chase, a dash back through everything we have encountered and, finally, a great big neon pumpkin waiting at the end.
This is toddler theatre in board-book costume! I can imagine it becoming one of those family favourites whose words are known long before anybody is technically able to read them.
It is playful rather than perilous, spooky rather than scary, and particularly lovely for under-twos discovering that Halloween can involve squeals of delight as well as things going bump in the night.
A pumpkin hunt should feel like an adventure and this one feels like joy with its spooky costume on.
Creep on Reading, Pumpkins!