The Pumpkin Blanket
PreSchool-Grade 2-- A beautiful and soulful story of a father weaning a daughter from her comfort blanket, set in the Canadian countryside. Zagwyn uses imagery from nature to describe Clee dancing in the blanket, wrapping it around her ears to block out coyotes' yowls, and finding comfort from distress beneath it. The autumn before her enrollment in winter-session kindergarten, she follows her father's urging to disassemble the patchwork quilt and to use each individual piece to protect a garden pumpkin from early frosts. As father and daughter harvest their crop, a gust of wind lifts the squares into the night sky where they're sewn back togther and "the shimmering pumpkin blanket draped itself around a mother-of-pearl pumpkin the moon and the folds winked at Clee . . . ." Readers are left with the image of the young girl gazing at a dozen flickering jack-o'-lanterns as she fingers a tiny leftover scrap of fabric. The illustrations share the text's lyrical quality and reinforce its many effective natural references with glowing watercolor and colored-pencil artwork executed in luscious earth tones. There is a lovely autumn flavor that links the book with the excitement and power of that season. Following the poetic prose and adjusting to the dreamlike strangeness of the illustrations will be challenging to many young children, but those who rise to the occasion will reap great rewards. Thoughtful recognition of a milestone in a child's growth. --Liza Bliss, Leominster Public Library, MACopyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.