Book Review: Rotten Pumpkin by David M. Schwartz

Not all kids like reading non-fiction and I know when I was in elementary school I had no drive to read them. So I made a promise to myself to read my kids non-fiction books at a young age in hopes to help them learn about the world in real life and in books. So we picked up this book, "Rotten Pumpkin" by David M. Schwartz from the library. I myself have read this book while student teaching so I knew what was going to happen. My three kids did not and were grossed out. Bahaha.

So in this book they go through the whole life cycle of a pumpkin using different characters. I consider this book realistic non-fiction. While it has all the facts we know pumpkins don't really talk as well. So in this book you see Jack slowly becoming compost with actual photos by Dwight Kuhn. I really enjoyed this book and all the facts that it had. I also love how they used pictures instead of illustrations because it shows the true story of what is happening to the pumpkin. My seven year old sat through it and was grossed out but enjoyed the pictures and the text. My five year old only enjoyed the pictures as he likes gross things but found the text too boring of his view. My three year old it didn't hold his attention. I recommend reading this from Kindergarten up and then take them to a pumpkin patch. Maybe even getting a pumpkin to do your own science experiment.


This book is on Mason's 1000 books before Kindergarten list