Upcoming children’s book follows an unlikely narrator from a tiny seed through the changing seasons, introducing young readers to growth, nature, and the excitement of a pumpkin patch
WISCONSIN – Oct 08, 2026 –A seed disappears beneath the soil. Rain falls. Roots stretch downward, a green shoot reaches toward the sun, bees arrive among the blossoms, and something round slowly begins to form beneath the leaves.
In Life on a Vine, Wisconsin children’s author Kari Hanson gives a familiar part of autumn a voice.
The forthcoming picture book follows a pumpkin’s life from its earliest days beneath the earth through the changing weeks of summer and fall. Told from the pumpkin’s perspective, the story lets children experience growth not as a textbook lesson, but as something happening around and to the narrator. The manuscript moves through germination, vines, flowers, pollination, fruit development, and the eventual arrival of children at the pumpkin patch.
For Hanson, that point of view mattered. She wanted young readers to notice the quiet changes that happen in a garden long before a pumpkin appears on a porch in October.
Parents, teachers, and librarians can use the story as a starting point for conversations about plants, pollination, changing seasons, farms, and the connection between people and the food or plants growing around them.
The story eventually brings young readers to a moment many families know well: children entering a pumpkin patch in search of one that feels like their own. The manuscript describes the patch filling with excited boys and girls before one pumpkin leaves the vine for a new home.
Hanson hopes that children finish the book looking at pumpkins, and perhaps the natural world itself, a little differently.
“There is a great deal happening in nature that children may never notice unless someone gives them a reason to look,” Hanson said in the proposed quote. “Sometimes a simple story can be that reason.”
Life on a Vine is scheduled for release on Oct 15, 2026 and will be available for readers beginning that date.
About Kari Hanson
Kari Hanson is a Wisconsin children’s author and retired educator whose debut book, Life on a Vine, drew inspiration from family, farming, and the changing seasons. She taught middle and high school students for 34 years and now enjoys sharing children’s literature with her grandchildren.