We Planted a Pumpkin (In the Garden)

In a sweetly seasonal picture book from Ramsden, two young gardeners anguish over growing a pumpkin in time for Halloween. Starting with a packet of seeds, a brown-skinned child usually sporting overalls and a pale-skinned child generally clad in stripes attend a resultant plant across spring, summer, and fall. Shape-based forms and printmaking textures summon a stage-like backdrop against which the children cheer ("Go, seed, go!"), fret ("oh, too slow"), and coax ("come on"), while pollinators, raindrops, and rays of sun work their unhurried magic on the would-be squash. Less gardening primer than accounting of a slow-moving triumph, this In the Garden series starter depicts a parent-free project in the works alongside the delayed gratification that gardening can represent, all leading up to the protagonists' breathless delight around holiday harvest. Ages 2-5. (Aug.)