From Dark to Light

From Dark to Light by Isabella Murphy

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Summary

Readers meet Pumpker, a little boy pumpkin, when he is just a slim white seed being planted along with his sisters.  Follow his journey of hopes and dreams as he grows to a pumpkin.

My Review

My favorite part of this book was the illustrations. They capture the whimsy of a pumpkin longing for a place to belong and to bring happiness to the world while also capturing the color and feel of autumn and the childhood excitement of Halloween.

The idea of this book is very cute. I was interested in seeing how a young 5th grade author would personify a pumpkin and portray his “life’s journey.” I was impressed by the author’s descriptive writing. However, there were too many words on each page for a picture book. Even as an adult I felt bogged down, so I think young readers will find it difficult to get through the words on each page.

Even with all of the words I didn’t feel completely satisfied in the little pumpkin’s journey. I couldn’t really latch on to a theme or purpose for the story. There wasn’t any one element that tied the stages of development of this pumpkin together so it felt too random. The pumpkin’s character traits weren’t consistent, so the story lacked cohesiveness for me. But the author is young; I have no doubt that with time and more writing she will gain more skill in story building and fleshing out plots and characters. She already possesses a true talent with words so I look forward to seeing more work from her in the future.

While I don’t think young readers will necessarily enjoy this story as much reading it on their own, I do think it has great value as a read-aloud and could be used in so many ways in an elementary school classroom. As a read-aloud you could easily skip some of the overlong text and summarize more quickly the main idea. The illustrations will definitely be able to keep children’s interest.

In the classroom I would love to use this book as an introduction to a creative writing assignment in which students would be required to personify an inanimate object, or to write from a unique perspective. The pumpkin’s journey to find his purpose in life would be a great way to get students’ creative juices flowing.

You could take it a step further even and add a social studies or science correlation. From Dark to Light provides a basic and entertaining view of the stages in seed growth. It also gives some material for the study of communities, occupations, and goods and services. You have the farmer who plants the seed, takes care of and grows the plant, then the consumer who buys and uses it. It would be valuable to read this book and then have students come up with their own story about the stages in seed growth about another type of plant. Or, they could take some other product and write a story to show how it is produced and then used in a community.

With Halloween just around the corner, the most obvious use of this book would be just pure fun and getting kids excited about holiday traditions. From Dark to Light definitely got me thinking about just how I want to carve the perfectly orange pumpkin currently sitting on my front porch.

Age Recommendation: This book is written for young readers and I think ages 3-8 would enjoy it most. However, because there are so many words on each page there may need to be some editing and summarizing to make it more in sync with their attention spans.

Appropriateness: Perfectly clean book with a feel-good ending.

Other Book Recommendations: If you are interested in From Dark to Light then you might also enjoy Big Pumpkin by Erica Silverman, The Biggest, Best Snowman by Margery Cuyler, Zombelina by Kristyn Crow, The Little Old Lady Who Was Not Afraid of Anything by Linda Williams, and Snowmen at Night by Caralyn Buehner.

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