Alice Pawley is an assistant professor of 
SciWo is an assistant professor of geosciences. She blogs about the intersection of science and real life - primarily based on her first-hand experiences. Her older posts can be found 
This week Minnow and I are pleased to honor the first request from a DonorsChoose Challenge giver. (There's still time, donate enough to complete a project, email me the receipt and you too can request a story.) I'll admit to being pretty excited when this request came it, because it was perfectly seasonal...and we already had the book in our queue. Today's featured book is Pumpkin Circle: The Story of a Garden, by George Levenson and exquisitely photographed by Shmuel Thaler.
But before we can get to the book, let's tell you about our trip to the pumpkin farm, where we learned some factoids about pumpkins, played in a corn pit, used a tomato slingshot (actually, Minnow ate her ammo), saw a week-old goat and her mama, got Minnow's face painted, went on a hayride, and picked our pumpkins from the pumpkin patch. Our pumpkin picking rule was that Minnow and I each had to be able to carry our own pumpkin. The only disappointment to the day was that a blog-turned-real life friend wasn't able to join us.
After our pumpkins were safely ensconced at home, Minnow and I settled in to read Pumpkin Circle...
Here are a few (non-sciencey) books that have been seasonally and scarily delighting us this month:
The Three Bears Halloween by Kathy Duvall
Berenstain Bears and the Spooky Old Tree by Stan and Jan Berenstain
A few nights ago, Minnow's pumpkin got expertly carved by her Daddy, after Minnow scooped the seeds, and while I toasted them and kept the pumpkin-carving messes contained. Minnow requested a triangle nose, octagon eyes, and a happy smile.
Happy Halloween everyone!
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and beaver teeth
Posted by: Daddy | October 30, 2009 7:52 AM
You sure that's a baby goat? Looks like a cat to me!
Posted by: Comrade PhysioProf | October 30, 2009 8:49 AM
As soon as I saw the title of your post, I thought "I should tell her about Pumpkin Circle!" But of course you already knew about it. One of the few (more or less) botanically accurate books about pumpkins out there.
There is also a video/dvd available of it, with great music and narration by famous people whose names I forget.
Posted by: Anonymous | October 30, 2009 12:32 PM
Very nice SciWo. I'll be buying these books for my child. In the meantime I'm more than happy to plop him down in front of the computer and have you read to him ;)
Posted by: an0n | November 2, 2009 10:03 AM