Karen's Pumpkin Patch

  This book is for

  Jerry and Randi Tisch,

  who would take very good care

  of a pumpkin patch.

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  1 Spook Night

  2 Mommies and Daddies

  3 Karen’s Pumpkin Patch

  4 The Biggest Pumpkin Ever

  5 King Kong

  6 Mischief Night

  7 King Kong’s Cage

  8 A Home for Every Pumpkin

  9 Pumpkins for Sale

  10 Hiding King Kong

  11 The Great Pumpkin

  12 The Snake Patch

  13 The Pumpkin Zoo

  14 Jack-o’-lanterns

  15 Making Mischief

  16 The Pumpkin-Smashers

  17 Good-bye, Kong

  18 The Worst Halloween Ever

  19 The Contest

  20 Happy Halloween!

  About the Author

  Also Available

  Copyright

  Spook Night

  “Look at this!” cried David Michael. He held up a hunk of black hair. “Your witch wig, Karen. Remember?”

  “Yup,” I said. “And here is a clown mask.”

  “Funny!” said Emily Michelle. (Emily is two and a half. She does not talk much yet. But someday she will.)

  “Here is a gross green monster hand,” said Andrew.

  Andrew is my brother. David Michael is my stepbrother. And Emily is my adopted sister. We were looking through a box of dress-up clothes in the playroom at Daddy’s house. It was full of old Halloween costumes.

  I am Karen Brewer. I am seven years old. I have blonde hair and freckles and glasses. I am in second grade at Stoneybrook Academy here in Stoneybrook, Connecticut. My teacher is Ms. Colman. I love her. Also, I love Halloween and every other holiday. Halloween would not come for awhile, but my sister and brothers and I wanted to be ready anyway.

  “Are you going to be a witch again, Karen?” asked David Michael.

  “Yup.” I am almost always a witch. I like to read about witches — but meeting a witch in person would be scary. And guess what. I think my next-door neighbor is a witch. I cannot be sure, though.

  “What are you going to be this year?” David Michael asked Andrew.

  Andrew frowned. “I don’t know yet. Maybe a monster. I like this monster hand. I could get fangs and warts and make my face green.”

  Emily laughed. “Funny!” she said again.

  “No, Emily. A monster is scary,” I explained patiently.

  “Scary,” Emily repeated. But she was still laughing.

  “I think we should all be in the Halloween parade,” said David Michael.

  “At the party?” I asked.

  David Michael nodded. “There is going to be a haunted house, too,” he added.

  “Cool!” I exclaimed.

  This year Halloween was going to be on a Saturday. And for the first time ever, Stoneybrook was going to have a big party downtown. Anybody could come. If you wore a costume you could walk in the parade. You could play games and bob for apples and eat candy and go through a spooky haunted house. Also, you could enter one of the pumpkin contests. There were going to be contests for pumpkins and contests for carved jack-o’-lanterns. The pumpkins would win prizes for biggest or prettiest or most strangely shaped. The jack-o’-lanterns would win prizes for fanciest or scariest or funniest. I wondered what the prizes would be.

  “I cannot wait for Halloween,” said Andrew.

  “For candy and parades and fun,” said David Michael.

  “For the spookiest night of the year,” I added.

  Emily Michelle had stopped paying attention to us. She was looking in the box of clothes again. She had picked out a tutu and a crown.

  “Hey, you could be a ballerina, Emily,” said Andrew.

  “Nah,” I replied. “That is much too ordinary. Anybody could be a ballerina. Emily, I will make you something different. How about an elf? Or a pumpkin? Or a snowflake?”

  Emily had taken off the crown. She had put on a football helmet. She grinned at us.

  “Emily, you cannot be a football player!” I exclaimed.

  “Why not?” asked David Michael.

  “Just because.”

  Andrew interrupted our discussion. “Karen?” he said. “I have an idea. Maybe this year we can trick-or-treat two times on spook night.”

  Right away I knew what he meant. And it was an extra good idea. Maybe we could trick-or-treat once in Mommy’s neighborhood and once in Daddy’s neighborhood. We would get so, so much candy!

  Mommies and Daddies

  Not just anybody can go trick-or-treating two times. But if you are a two-two like Andrew and me, maybe you can. What is a two-two? A two-two is someone with two families. And Andrew and I have two families now. Once, we had just one family — Mommy, Daddy, Andrew, and me. We lived in Daddy’s big house, the one with the box full of Halloween costumes. That is the house Daddy grew up in.

  But after Mommy and Daddy had been married for awhile, they decided they did not love each other anymore. They loved Andrew and me, but not each other. And they did not want to live together. So Daddy stayed in his house and Mommy moved out. She moved to a little house in Stoneybrook. She brought Andrew and me with her. Now Andrew and I live with Mommy most of the time, and with Daddy every other weekend, and on some vacations and holidays.

  Guess what. Mommy and Daddy are married again, but not to each other. Mommy married Seth Engle. He is my stepfather. Daddy married Elizabeth Thomas. She is my stepmother. And that is how Andrew and I got two families.

  This is my little-house family: Mommy, Seth, Andrew, me, Rocky, Midgie, and Emily Junior. Rocky and Midgie are Seth’s cat and dog. Emily Junior is my rat. (I named her after Emily Michelle.)

  This is my big-house family: Daddy, Elizabeth, Nannie, Emily, David Michael, Kristy, Sam, Charlie, Andrew, me, Shannon, Boo-Boo, Crystal Light the Second, and Goldfishie. Nannie is Elizabeth’s mother, which makes her my stepgrandmother. Nannie came to the big house after Daddy and Elizabeth adopted Emily. (Emily was born in a faraway country called Vietnam.) They needed somebody to help take care of her. David Michael, Kristy, Sam, and Charlie are Elizabeth’s kids, so they are my stepbrothers and stepsister. David Michael is seven like me. (Well, he is a few months older.) Sam and Charlie go to high school. And Kristy is thirteen. I adore Kristy. She is one of my most favorite people ever. And she is a baby-sitter. She babysits for David Michael and Emily and Andrew and me all the time. I am gigundoly glad to have a big sister.

  The other people at Daddy’s house are actually pets. Not humans. Shannon is David Michael’s puppy. Boo-Boo is Daddy’s old tiger cat. And Crystal Light the Second and Goldfishie are fish. They belong to Andrew and me.

  Now you know why my brother and I are Andrew Two-Two and Karen Two-Two. (By the way, I got that name from the title of a book Ms. Colman read to our class. It is called Jacob Two-Two Meets the Hooded Fang.) Andrew and I have two families. We have two houses, two mommies, two daddies, two cats, and two dogs. Plus, I have two bicycles, one at each house. I have two stuffed cats that look exactly the same. Moosie stays at the big house, Goosie stays at the little house. I have toys and books and clothes at each house. Andrew, too. This is good because we do not have to pack much when we go back and forth between Mommy’s and Daddy’s. I even have two best friends. Nancy Dawes lives next door to Mommy. Hannie Papadakis lives across the street from Daddy and one house down. Nancy and Hannie are in Ms. Colman’s class, too. We call ourselves the Three Musketeers.

  Sometimes I do not like being a two-two, but mostly it is okay. Andrew and I usually get to celebrate holidays two times, once with each family. And maybe — mayb
e — we would be able to go trick-or-treating two times this year. Even if we did not, I wouldn’t care. I could still look forward to the Halloween parade, the contests, the party, and the haunted house.

  “Hurry up, Halloween!” I whispered.

  Karen’s Pumpkin Patch

  “May I have your attention, please?” said Daddy.

  I looked up from my lunch. Emily and my brothers and I had finished playing with the costumes in the trunk. We had put everything away. Then Kristy had called us to the kitchen.

  Now I was sitting at the table with my big-house family. We were eating soup and sandwiches. And Daddy was going to make an announcement. (Ms. Colman is always making Surprising Announcements at school. Surprising Announcements are usually fun.)

  “The yard,” said Daddy, “needs some work. It is messy and overgrown.”

  “Except for the grass,” interrupted Charlie. “I cut the grass last weekend.”

  “Except for the grass,” agreed Daddy. “So I would like everyone to help out in the yard this afternoon. I will give each of you a job.”

  Boo. This was not a fun announcement at all. I wanted to go over to Hannie’s house instead. We had planned to make clothes for my rat.

  “Emily and Andrew,” said Daddy, “you will help Nannie weed the garden in the front yard. David Michael, you will help your mom in the herb garden. Kristy, you will trim the grass by the driveway. Sam and Charlie, you will clean the gutters. And Karen, you will help me in the vegetable garden.”

  I happen to like vegetable gardens. I like them very much. Once, in the summer, I took a plane trip all by myself to visit Seth’s parents in the state of Nebraska. They live on a farm. And I helped to grow vegetables. I picked them, too. That was the best part. But today I did not feel like gardening. Emily Junior needed a new outfit.

  “Daddy?” I said.

  “Yes, Karen?”

  “Do I have to work in the vegetable garden?”

  “Everybody is going to work in the yard today,” he answered. “If you do not want to work in the vegetable garden, you may work somewhere else.”

  I scrunched up my face. “That’s okay. I will help you.” I sighed loudly.

  “Thank you,” said Daddy.

  * * *

  When lunch was over Daddy and I walked through the backyard. The vegetable garden is in a corner. (Luckily, it is not right next to the witch’s backyard.)

  “Okay. What do I have to do?” I asked. I was pouting.

  “Before you do anything,” Daddy replied, “I want you to see something.”

  He led me through the rows of eggplants and tomato plants and beans and carrots and turnips and potatoes. Not much was left. The vegetable garden was getting ready for autumn and winter.

  I guess I had not been in the garden for a very long time, because I did not even know that in the spring Daddy had planted …

  “Pumpkins!” I cried. “A whole pumpkin patch!”

  Behind the other vegetables were dozens and dozens of bright orange pumpkins. Big ones, little ones, fat ones, skinny ones, lumpy ones. The vines trailed everywhere — and everywhere I looked, pumpkins peeked back at me.

  “They will be ready in time for Halloween,” Daddy told me. “If we leave them on the vines until then, they will just keep on growing.”

  I nodded. I had spotted a huge, beautiful, perfect pumpkin near the center of the patch. I remembered the Halloween party.

  “Daddy?” I said. I ran to the pumpkin. “Could I enter this in the pumpkin contest on Halloween? Could this pumpkin be mine?”

  “I will make you a deal,” Daddy replied. “The entire patch can be yours if you will take care of it.”

  “Really? I promise to water it and to learn about pumpkins. I will even take care of them during the week. I could ride to the big house after school with Hannie.”

  “Okay,” said Daddy. “Then the pumpkin patch is yours.”

  The Biggest Pumpkin Ever

  A pumpkin patch was a big responsibility. I was going to be the mother to about a hundred baby pumpkins. I had to do a good job.

  Andrew and I went back to the little house on Sunday night. “Seth?” I said. “I am a mother now. I need to find out about raising pumpkins. Do you know anything about pumpkins?”

  “Not much,” Seth answered. “Why don’t you read about them?”

  Mommy took me to the library after school on Monday.

  “I need to find out about pumpkins,” I said to the librarian.

  The librarian helped me look up “pumpkins” in the card catalogue. Then she said, “We have some gardening books, too. And of course the encyclopedia. You could read about pumpkins in the encyclopedia.”

  That was a good idea. I looked in the encyclopedia first. I already knew some of what I found there. I knew that pumpkins are orange or yellowish. I knew you can eat the pulp. (The pulp is a pumpkin’s insides.) And I knew people use the pulp in pies and puddings. Also that people carve jack-o’-lanterns from pumpkins at Halloween.

  Then I read some things I did not know. I found out that some people make pumpkin soup. I found out that most pumpkins weigh nine to eighteen pounds … and that big kinds of pumpkins can weigh sixty-five pounds or more.

  “Sixty-five pounds!” I exclaimed.

  “Shhh!” hissed Mommy. “Indoor voice, Karen. You are in a library.”

  “Sorry,” I whispered. “But sixty-five pounds is a lot. That is more than I weigh. I wonder if my beautiful pumpkin is the large kind. I wonder if he could grow to sixty-five pounds. I better see what I can find out in these other books.”

  That day the librarian showed me two very wonderful books. One was called The All-Around Pumpkin Book, by Margery Cuyler. The other was called The Biggest Pumpkin Ever, by Steven Kroll. I especially liked Mr. Kroll’s book. It is about two mice growing a big, beautiful pumpkin for a contest. Just like me! I checked both books out of the library.

  * * *

  On Tuesday I rode home from school with Hannie. She came with me to my pumpkin patch at the big house. She helped me water the pumpkins.

  “This pumpkin,” I said, showing Hannie the extra-special one, “is the pumpkin I am going to enter in the contest. I think he will win two prizes — most beautiful, and biggest. Maybe he will even be the biggest pumpkin the judges have ever seen in their whole lives.”

  “I am going to enter one of the contests, too,” Hannie told me.

  “You are?”

  “Yes. A jack-o’-lantern contest. I have been drawing scary faces. I want to practice a lot before I draw a face on my Halloween pumpkin.”

  Hannie and I talked about the contest while we worked in the garden.

  “There is so much to do,” I told Hannie later. “Every time I am in the patch I have to remember to turn my pumpkin a little. I do not want him to get a soft spot by lying in one position too long. And I have to fertilize my pumpkin. Guess what else I am going to do for him.”

  “What?” said Hannie.

  “Feed him sugar water. That is what the mice do in The Biggest Pumpkin Ever. And their pumpkin wins first prize and gets a blue ribbon.”

  “Gosh,” said Hannie.

  “I hope there’s enough time for my pumpkin to grow to sixty-five pounds,” I added. “I am not sure there is. But I will let him grow until Halloween, until the very day of the contest. I will not cut him from the vine until then.”

  King Kong

  “The pumpkin ran away,” I sang softly. “Before Thanksgiving Day.”

  “Karen, why are you thinking about Thanksgiving?” Ricky Torres asked me. “It is not November yet. It is not even October.”

  “I am not thinking about Thanksgiving. I am thinking about pumpkins,” I replied. “Big, fat pumpkins.”

  Ricky Torres is in Ms. Colman’s class with Hannie and Nancy and me. He sits next to me in the first row. We have to sit up front because we are glasses-wearers. Ricky is my pretend husband. We got married on the playground one day.

  “Well,” said
Ricky, “why are you thinking about pumpkins, then?”

  “Because of my pumpkin patch.”

  Ricky narrowed his eyes. “You have a pumpkin patch?” he asked.

  “Yup,” I replied. Then I added, “Honest.” (Sometimes the kids in my class do not know whether to believe me. They say I brag.)

  “She really does have a pumpkin patch,” said Hannie. “I have seen it myself.”

  A bunch of kids were gathering around me.

  “A whole patch?” asked Natalie Springer.

  “A whole patch. Daddy planted it in the spring when he planted our vegetable garden. Only I did not know it. When he showed it to me last week it was full of pumpkins. And I am in charge of them. I am the mother of those pumpkins. One of them is just gigundo,” I went on. “Daddy said I could have him if I would take care of the patch. I am going to enter him in the pumpkin contest on Halloween. He will win most beautiful pumpkin. I am sure of it. Maybe he will win biggest pumpkin, too.”

  “He?” said Bobby Gianelli.

  “Yes,” I replied. “My huge pumpkin is named King Kong, because he is so big. I call him Kong for short. Kong is his nickname.”

  “Boy,” said Pamela Harding. “I have not even started looking for a Halloween pumpkin. And you have already picked yours out, Karen.”

  “Hey, Karen, what are you going to do with the rest of the pumpkins?” asked Ricky. “I never knew anyone with a whole patch.”

  Hmm. That was a good question. What was I going to do with all those pumpkins? Nannie could use a few of them for pies and soup, but an awful lot would be left over. Then I thought of something. I had Halloween pumpkins, and soon my friends would need Halloween pumpkins.

  “Everybody,” I said, “how would you like to buy your pumpkins from me this year? I will give you a good deal.”

  “Buy them from you?” repeated Natalie.

  “Yup. You could come to my yard and pick them out of the patch.”

  “Cool,” said Natalie.

  “Awesome,” said Ricky and Bobby.

  Pamela just said, “I will have to think about it.” That is because Pamela and I do not get along very well. But I knew she would come to her senses by Halloween. She would buy her pumpkin out of my patch just like everyone else.