10 Pumpkin Books to Read This Season

The Light Inside by Dan Misdea
This Halloween book is so cute! It’s tiny (six inches by six inches) and it’s completely wordless. It follows a young jack-o-lantern is pretty timid but when his beloved stuffed animal is blown away in a breeze, he’ll stop at nothing to get him back, even if it means facing a cat, skeleton, and witch. I love this one!

Stumpkin by Lucy Ruth Cummins
Poor Stumpkin. He’s such a beautiful pumpkin, but his stem got snapped off and now no one wants him. As the other pumpkins get snatched up before Halloween, Stumpkin stays where he is, wishing that someone will take him home and make him into a beautiful jack-o-lantern. This is such a sweet story with a surprise twist!

When Pumpkins Fly by Margaret Lawrence, illustrated by Amanda Sandland
Based on Inuit folklore, this book takes place in the remote community of Sanikiluaq, Nunavut where supplies come in only by cargo flight. This year, pumpkins are delivered for the first time and carving them is a special treat for the children. But when the pumpkins are left outside alone, Halloween takes a surprising turn!

Runaway Pumpkins by Teresa Bateman, illustrated by Stephanie Fizer Coleman
It’s a thrill when you go on a class field trip to the pumpkin patch and each get to pick a pumpkin. It’s less of a thrill when the bus hatch accidentally opens on the way back to school and all the pumpkins, except one solitary one, tumble out and smash. But there’s a happy ending to this story!

Pumpkin Trouble by Jan Thomas
Jan Thomas is a sure hit at our house – every one of her books just amuses everyone to no end (although I have a special place in my heart for Let’s Sing a Lullaby with the Brave Cowboy) and this pumpkin-themed one is no exception. Duck wants to carve a pumpkin to surprise his friends, but then he falls in and can’t get out, so he waddles away to find someone to rescue him, but all his friends think it’s a haunted pumpkin and flee in terror.

Too Many Pumpkins by Linda White, illustrated by Megan Lloyd
This is one of the longer books on this list, but it’s so sweet and my girls were big fans. Rebecca Estelle hates pumpkins. As as a child, her family was so poor that they ate nothing but pumpkin for a period of time, and so now, as an old woman, she’s determined never to even look at another pumpkin again. She busily tends her productive garden that has absolutely no pumpkins. Until a pumpkin truck rattles down the road by her house and a pumpkin falls out and smashes on her property. Of course, a pumpkin left to rot in the ground is going to be bringing some surprises come fall. And now Rebecca Estelle is going to have to figure out how to deal with dozens of pumpkins.

Pumpkin Jack by Will Hubbell
I like this slightly longer Halloween story about a boy who puts his beloved jack-o-lantern out in the garden when it starts to rot after Halloween and then watches all year as the seeds sprout and a new pumpkin grows from the remains of the first.