Pumpkin Heads

In this perfectly realised graphic novel, Josiah and Deja are spending their last night as student workers at a Halloween Pumpkin Patch in the Midwest of the USA. For those readers who are as unfamiliar with a Halloween Pumpkin Patch as I am, it seems to be a seasonal family event which takes place on a (pumpkin) farm and features lots of Halloween-type snacks and other attractions like a petting zoo and a Halloween ghost train, and is staffed predominantly by high school students. Josiah and Deja have been teamed up for the last three years, usually at the Succotash Hut, where they stir and sell – well- succotash. But next year they will be at college and this night is an opportunity for them to savour Halloween joys for the last time and to take care of some unfinished business. With illustrator Faith Erin Hicks and author Rainbow Rowell, we follow the two friends as dynamic and sociable Deja attempts to shake diffident Josiah out of his cautious and self conscious ways and to actually talk to the girl on the fudge counter that he has admired from afar. It’s a well-observed humorous conversation piece in which we get to know them both much better and to realise how their friendship is based on mutual respect and a shared sense of humour. The obvious question that arises, of course, is what kind of relationship this really is. Could it be that, by the end of an evening of unruly child customers, an escaped goat, half-finished snacks and their incompetent replacements who set the succotash on fire, they will find that they are more than just friends? It’s gently and wittily done with sympathy for its two central characters and their different approaches to life and much affection for this once a year innocent country jamboree.