The Story of a Pumpkin

The Story of A Pumpkin
By Hari Tiwari
Illustrated by Dal Rai
Published by New Hampshire Humanities Council

*Available in September 2012
Find a copy at Amazon | IndieBound | B&N

 

Description
The tale begins:

One day, a woman planted a pumpkin seed. It grew and the plant bore fruit. When the pumpkin was young, the woman went to pick it. The pumpkin said, “Don’t pick me now. I’m too young. Let me stay here a while to mature, and I will come to the house by myself.” The woman was surprised that the pumpkin she planted had begun to talk. But she did not pick it.

The pumpkin shortly rolls by himself to the woman in her kitchen and a magical, funny, sometimes scary, always exciting tale illuminates the pages.

The Story of a Pumpkin is a traditional tale from Bhutan retold by Hari Tiwari as she remembers it from the time she was a small child growing up in rural Bhutan. Written as a collaboration with the New Hampshire Humanities Council and the Bhutanese community, the book is in both English and Nepali.

Reviews & Accolades
“It was such a wonderful thing to be a part of this morning — my student from Bhutan, Chandra, has an adult daughter who read the story aloud in Nepali, as Chandra, her elderly mother-in-law, two little girls and I all listened intently.  I didn’t understand the words, of course, but the facial expressions, laughter, and comments afterward told me they all loved it.  Chandra is keeping it to practice reading English with her daughter.  I look forward to future lessons where we read it together. What a gift.” –Comment made by an English Language Teacher

Groups Represented
Bhutanese

Themes
Traditions, storytelling, oral tradition

Setting
Bhutan

Author Research
Hari Tiwari, Author: When I was a girl in Bhutan, I lived in the village of Dumfa. My father worked on a farm, growing rice, corn, cucumbers, peas, beans, lentils, and potatoes. My job was to tend the cows and goats. I did not go to school, but I remember many of the stories my father told me. I told them to my oldest daughter and when I lived in Beldangi, one of the refugee camps in Nepal, I used to tell stories to the elders who gathered at the Oxfam school. I lived in the camp 18 years. If I had land in New Hampshire, I would like to have a farm again. I would grow vegetables, especially cabbage and peppers, and tend the cows. My father would be so happy if he knew The Story of a Pumpkin had become a book. This was my favorite story that he told me when I was a child.

Dal  Rai, Illustrator: I worked on a farm when I was a boy in the hills of southern Bhutan in the village of Neemtola. My memories helped me to paint the pictures for The Story of a Pumpkin. I remembered our combs that were made of malingo bamboo. I remembered our fields of millet, rice, and barley, and our pumpkin patch. We had no art materials on the farm when I was young. At the refugee camp in Nepal, my teacher gave me a pencil and I began to draw. When I was thirteen, I got a job and with the money I bought crayons. I sold some of my crayon pictures and that motivated me to buy water color paints. My dad and mother were interested in my drawings and they also gave me money for supplies. My goal in the United States is to study art and to continue drawing and painting.

Susan Kapuscinski Gaylord, Book Designer: My task as designer was to honor both the story and the culture it came from. Every act of gathering imagery led to increased understanding. Dal’s paintings and the conversations around them brought us knowledge of how the land was farmed and food was prepared. A visit to Ambika Sharma’s house in Laconia to scan traditional fabrics (used as borders and design elements throughout the book) became a lesson in the customs of Bhutanese wedding ceremonies. In Johanna Young’s ESOL class in Concord, New Hampshire we learned about the flora and fauna of Bhutan as students created drawings that now grace many pages of the book. The font we chose is Adobe Garamond Pro, an elegant traditional style to suit the tradition of a tale. After research with a scholar on non-Latin scripts and members of New Hampshire’s Bhutanese community, we chose the Nepali font Preeti, which is familiar to people who had been to school in Nepal. The background of each page is a scan of handmade paper from Bhutan.

Engagement Projects
VISIT The Story of a Pumpkin blog for information about creating the book, the Bhutanese Nepali Folktale Project and audio files to listen to other recorded folktales

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