Reviews

Kirkus
Copyright © Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

A trio of monsters enjoy Halloween festivities in this pumpkin-shaped board-book offering.A fuzzy blue critter with horns, accompanied by a purple dinosaurlike creature and yellow beastie with pigtails, selects a pumpkin from a patch, carves it and takes it to a jack-o'-lantern contest. The rhyming text, with one line per page, is forced and doesn't scan: "Pumpkin, pumpkin, big and steady, / Costumes and carving, time to get ready!" While the three central characters are appropriately toddler-friendly, monsters dressing up for Halloween is a bit of a conceptual stretch. The shiny orange foil cover and the bright orange pumpkins within are eye-catching, but the rest of the palettepale blues, greens, grays and brownscauses some of the characters to fade into the scenery in Marts' quirky cartoons.This slight slice of pumpkin pie will tempt few little trick-or-treaters. (Board book. 18 mos.-3) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.


Publishers Weekly
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

A bouncy Halloween rhyme and a friendly doglike monster guide readers through this board book, which is die-cut in the shape of a squat pumpkin and embellished with foil on its covers. The simplicity of Karr's verse ("Pumpkin, pumpkin, orange and round./ Growing on the patchy ground") means that Marts's digital cartoons are responsible for establishing the sunny book's mood and the sanguine personalities of the un-scary monsters, who are seen picking pumpkins and showing off their costumes while trick-or-treating. Ages 2-5. (July) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

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