General & Miscellaneous Holidays, Fiction - Holidays & Festivals, Fiction - Nature, Fiction - Family Life

The Bumpy Little Pumpkin

Name: The Bumpy Little Pumpkin
Author: Margery Cuyler
ISBN: 9780439528344

by Margery Cuyler, Will Hillenbrand

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Overview

This sweet Halloween companion to top-seller THE BIGGEST, BEST SNOWMAN is now available in paperback!

All summer, Little Nell has tended the garden with BIG Mama, BIG Sarah, and BIG Lizzie, and finally the pumpkins are ready for Halloween. Her sisters choose smooth, round pumpkins to carve, but Little Nell likes a bumpy little one best. Sarah and Lizzie jeer, "It's bumpy and little and ugly!" But Little Nell perseveres. With help from her animal friends, she scoops and carves it into a wonderful jack-o'-lantern! This sweet tale shows that jack-o'-lanterns, like people, come in all shapes and sizes, and that BIG ideas and a BIG heart resound in even the smallest of us.

Synopsis

Publishers Weekly

Like Horowitz's Ugly Pumpkin, this tale's asymmetrical vegetable does not meet ideal jack-o'-lantern specifications. When Little Nell selects it, her sister Big Sarah suggests, "How about this nice, smooth one instead?" Nell sticks to her choice, and a sympathetic Reindeer, Hare and Bear Cub help her to carve it. Cuyler and Hillenbrand introduced stubborn Nell and her know-it-all elders in The Biggest, Best Snowman. Once again, they cheer Nell's defiance, but the dewy-eyed talking animals here seem to add a bit of a maudlin, rather than supportive, touch. Ages 4-8. (Aug.) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

About the Author, Margery Cuyler

Growing up in a hubbub of creativity, Margery Cuyler has truly mastered the art of storytelling. Her ingenious family of artists, actors, storytellers, and writers made her childhood fascinating and exciting. Adding to the excitement of her bustling New Jersey home were her four cousins, three brothers, and one sister. She spent her days playing common household games and performing plays with her siblings and cousins. Every night she’d drift to sleep to the soothing sounds of her parents reading at her bedside. Margery’s passion for children and literature motivated her to write and edit children’s books. "I think storytelling is an act of love. Children's books are carrying the storytelling for our whole culture, and that is an awesome responsibility."

As an author of more than thirty children’s books, Margery’s works span from picture books to poetry to non-fiction texts. Her recent books are The Bumpy Little Pumpkin, Groundhog Stays Up Late, and Please Say Please! Penguin’s Guide to Manners. Her latest work, Please Play Safe! Penguin’s Guide to Playground Safety, tells the story of Penguin and his boisterous friends’ trip to the playground. Their trip is full with silly and noisy mishaps, but by the end of the day, they have learned applicable lessons of safety for playground play.

During the course of her twenty-plus-year career, Cuyler, a Sarah Lawrence graduate, has worked as an executive for Holiday House, Inc., Henry Holt and Company, Golden Books, and Winslow Press. Now she works as director for the trade division at Marshall Cavendish, where she enjoys the extra free time and works on her craft.

Margery Cuyler resides in Princeton, New Jersey with her loving husband, John; her two sons, Thomas and Timothy; and their two cats, Boomerang and Nikki.

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Editorials

From the Publisher

PW 8-1-05
Like Horowitz's Ugly Pumpkin , this tale's asymmetrical vegetable does not meet ideal jack-o'-lantern specifications. When Little Nell selects it, her sister Big Sarah suggests, "How about this nice, smooth one instead?" Nell sticks to her choice, and a sympathetic Reindeer, Hare and Bear Cub help her to carve it. Cuyler and Hillenbrand introduced stubborn Nell and her know-it-all elders in The Biggest, Best Snowman . Once again, they cheer Nell's defiance, but the dewy-eyed talking animals here seem to add a bit of a maudlin, rather than supportive, touch. Ages 4-8. (Aug.)

Publishers Weekly

School Library Journal

PreS-Gr 2-Little Nell, introduced in The Biggest, Best Snowman (Scholastic, 1998), returns with BIG Mama, BIG Sarah, and BIG Lizzie. It's Halloween, and the three siblings are looking for pumpkins to carve into jack-o'-lanterns. Little Nell's selection is deemed too small and ugly by her sisters. Not to be deterred, Little Nell enlists the help of Reindeer, Hare, and Bear Cub and creates a special jack-o'-lantern that can proudly take its place on the porch. As BIG Mama says, "Jack-o'-lanterns come in all shapes and sizes!," a line that can be reassuringly applied to children as well. Reminiscent of Charlie Brown's devotion to his scraggly Christmas tree, Little Nell's story is just as satisfying, stressing the worth of a child's handiwork and the value of creating. The colorful cartoons provide the perfect complement. This is a holiday story that can be used year round; it's an excellent choice for reading aloud, both in a group setting or one-on-one.-Kara Schaff Dean, Needham Public Library, MA Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

In this holiday-themed retread of The Biggest, Best Snowman (1998), Little Nell once again "proves" (with plenty of help) that she's more capable than her two big sisters suppose. Here, she rejects the condescending offers of BIG Sarah and BIG Lizzie, enlisting instead a coterie of forest animals to carve something into the small, lumpy pumpkin she's chosen. Hillenbrand sets the woodsy tale in a burgeoning pumpkin patch, surrounds tuft-haired, dot-eyed Nell with smiling fauna and closes with a full-page scene of her embracing her candle-lit, misshapen jack-o'-lantern in the wake of BIG Mama's fulsome praise. Though even younger children may be left wondering how a reindeer's antler or the beaks of birds could produce such straight, knifelike cuts in Nell's pumpkin, the empowerment theme easily leaps such logic gaps-as the likes of Ruth Krauss's Carrot Seed or Pat Hutchins' Titch have demonstrated for generations of post-toddlers. (Picture book. 5-7)