A Family Teams Up to Turn an Accident Into a Blessing in The Runaway Pumpkin

In Tasha Tudor’s 1958 book Pumpkin Moonshine, a young girl selects a pumpkin to carve into a jack-o-lantern and then chases it as it rolls down a hill, disrupting livestock and upsetting property until it comes to a rest and her grandparents help her do something fun with it. This is also the basic story in Kevin Lewis’s The Runaway Pumpkin, illustrated by S. D. Schindler.

I don’t suppose that Lewis was influenced by Tudor’s tale; after all, a pumpkin rolling down a hill is not a difficult image to come up with. Still, with the farmland, the grandparents and the mild destruction the pumpkin causes, there are definite similarities. However, this 2003 book has a more contemporary setting. Instead of one child, there are three, and all of them are in costume. Additionally, instead of prose, this story is told in verse.

As someone who has devoted a lot of time to trying to perfect my scansion, I can’t help noticing how little attention is paid to it in many children’s books. This one isn’t too bad; it’s a bit clunky in places, but for the most part, it reads pretty well. Lewis employs some useful repetition as he has each member of the family think of a different delicacy made by Granny when the pumpkin rolls by. This sets us up for the book’s cheerful conclusion. He also repeats a sonically satisfying series of adjectives describing the pumpkin as it rolls.

The sheer size of the pumpkin is likely to elicit giggles from young readers. The thing is really a monstrosity, though it is almost perfectly round. The way that Poppa stops the pumpkin in its tracks is quite clever. It would be nice if the kids were involved in the resolution of this problem, but the sense of the whole family pulling together is sweet. This is definitely a tale of family togetherness, and the costumes that each member of the family wears as they gather around the table for a cozy celebration add to the fun. I especially like the complicated insect costume that Grampa dons.

Schindler’s illustrations are in muted tones but are full of vivid detail. He provides a series of two-page spreads with the text printed over the paint in a playful font, and these paintings set us very firmly in autumn and also show how much trouble one pumpkin is capable of causing. I think my favorite illustration may be the one that shows Grampa on the ground, shaking his fist at the pumpkin that has just knocked him over, while white chickens scatter in a flurry of feathers.

The ordinary pumpkin in Pumpkin Moonshine stirs things up a bit, but this jumbo-sized would-be jack-o-lantern really makes a mess. This is a silly story with a warm thread of family giving it a heartening ending. Of the two, I think I give this one just a bit of an edge for both excitement and sentimentality. The pumpkin runs away, but great things happen when it stops.