Squampkins!

While perusing the children’s section a few weeks ago, up popped The Squampkin Patch by JT Petty with a Halloween sticker on the spine and a bunch of pumpkins on the cover. How can an autumn/Halloween lover resist? She can’t. That’s the surprising answer (I know, you’re shocked).  I took it home with me, let it sit around for a week, started reading and then trudged through.

The Squampkin Patch is the story of the Nasselrogt children whose parents go missing in a department store, so the two end up in an orphanage. As fictional orphanages go, this one is pretty typical, save for the fact that the head of the orphanage makes the children work in his zipper factory. Well, Milton and Chloe refuse to become zipper factory workers, so they run away and end up in a small town. There they discover the Argyle house and bakery which are now abandoned, and an extensive pumpkin patch. As Chole and Milton get acquainted with the house and the neighbors, they stumble upon the previous owner’s journal called “The Pumpkin/Chocolate Trials”. From reading, the children discover that the pumpkin patch is actually a squampkin patch, a hybrid pumpkin and squash variety. But the patch seems to purr, and move. There are strange events surrounding the patch. On Halloween night, the children discover that the patch is not only growing, but coming to life and after them.

The writing is indicative of Lemony Snicket’s writing in The Series of Unfortunate Events. The narrator is a bit pompous and, at the beginning, defines words for you. The writing has the stuck up air of Snicket’s works, and considering I’m not a fan of his series, I was not thrilled when I began reading JT Petty’s work. Although I must admit that the book is written well and I think it challenges kids. Milton and Chloe are children that you feel you could meet anywhere and they were easy to read about, but I was not attached to them. The story itself was multifaceted, but I was not compelled by it. My favorite part about the book was that at the bottom of each page was a drawing of a growing squampkin and it was a flip book, so that you could “watch” it grow.

The book was fine, but I almost just put it aside because I did not find the story intriguing and there was not enough mystery and superstition as what I anticipated. If you like The Series of Unfortunate Events, maybe JT Petty’s work will appeal to you, but for me, I’ll avoid it in the future.