Pumpkin Day at the Zoo

Susan Meissner is a USA TODAY bestselling author with more than three-quarters of a million books in print in eighteen languages. Her novels have been named to numerous "best of" lists, including Publishers Weekly, Booklist, Goodreads, and Real Simple magazine. A former newspaper editor, Susan attended Point Loma Nazarene University in San Diego and lives in the Pacific Northwest with her husband and their yellow Lab, Winston. When she's not writing, Susan loves long walks, good coffee, and reading bedtime stories to her grandchildren. Visit her online at susanmeissnerauthor.com; Instagram: @susanmeissnerauthor; Twitter: @SusanMeissner; Facebook: @susan.meissner; and Pinterest: @SusanMeissner.Pablo Pino is a self-taught illustrator. In addition to the fifty published books he has illustrated, Pablo has designed characters, board games, schoolbooks, and magazines with various worldwide publishing companies. His illustrations are mostly computer drawn, but he always adds textures using pencils, crayons, acrylics, or any material that lets him get messy. Pablo was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Voracious animals chow down throughout this account of an autumnal highlight: a zoo's post-Halloween pumpkin day. Chipper imperative rhymes from Meissner invite a menagerie of species--an aardvark with a 'spiffy sniffer,' apes and baboons, hippos, a wildebeest, and others--to partake in a feast ('Marvelous meerkats,/ come have a bite./ We know you love this crunchy/ delight'). As human figures portrayed with various skin tones gather, Pino's animation-style artwork portrays myriad scenes of the zoo's animal denizens enthusiastically devouring their treats. A beaver stares out from a pumpkin worn like a diving helmet; a yak, rind speared on its horn, slurps up seeds; and enterprising chipmunks collect fragments in a wooden wagon. Concluding pages show the whole gang with bellies bulging as final remarks imagine what the wild diners might say as thanks for the squashes. The carnivalesque vibe contributes to a genial picture of fall's bounty from an animal's-eye view.