Too Many Pumpkins [Paperback]

What can you do with too many pumpkins?

Rebecca Estelle has hated pumpkins ever since she was a girl when pumpkins were often the only food her family had. When an enormous pumpkin falls off a truck and smashes in her yard, she shovels dirt over the pieces and forgets about them. But those slimy pumpkin smithereens sprout up in autumn, and Rebecca Estelle finds a sea of pumpkins in her garden. 

A heartwarming classic for more than twenty years, this story shows what happens when one thrifty gardener figures out how to make other people happy with the squash she can't stomach.

Filled with colorful illustrations from a season of gardening, this is a perfect book for young gardeners and pumpkin lovers. Its wonderful lesson about helping others can be appreciated in the classroom or at home. Rebecca Estelle hates pumpkins. What's not to like? you may be thinking. Certainly, pumpkins are benign, as far as gourds go, and they make for delicious pies. But if you were forced to eat only pumpkins (baked, steamed, boiled, stewed, mashed, and rotten), you might agree with Rebecca, who was so poor as a child that she could only afford to eat the unrelentingly orange squash.

One day, years and years later, white-haired Rebecca was busy not eating pumpkins when--SPLAT--a giant pumpkin fell off an overloaded truck and smashed into her yard. She buried the mess so she wouldn't have to look at it, and, as you might imagine, she witnessed a bumper crop the following fall. In Too Many Pumpkins, a 1996American Bookseller Pick of the Lists,  Linda White (who based the book on her own pumpkin-eating aunt Becky) reveals how swallowing one's personal (pumpkin) prejudices can end up benefiting a whole community. Illustrator Megan Lloyd creates spunky, detail-rich drawings that are sure to hold up to the scrutiny of youngsters everywhere. This isan ideal Halloween-time book for those who want to bypasl-