Franklin's Pumpkin

Sylvia Pantaleo is an associate professor of education, specializing in
children’s literature, at the University of Victoria. She is the
co-author of Learning with Literature in the Canadian Elementary
Classroom.

The Gee Whiz magazine is sponsoring a contest for those who think they
can engage in the same activity for five consecutive hours without
stopping. Franklin and his friends enter the contest. Beaver twiddles
his thumbs, Rabbit wiggles his ears, Fox hums, Bear eats, and the young
turtle ... thinks. At the end of the five hours Franklin, the thinker,
is the winner!

Franklin wants a scooter. He tries many conventional approaches to
getting one, including asking his parents, emptying his piggy bank,
selling lemonade, and having a yard sale. Rabbit, who owns a scooter,
wants to buy Franklin’s bicycle at the yard sale. The two friends
realize that they can share the scooter and bicycle, and each is pleased
by the arrangement.

Franklin has a detective hat and coat, a magnifying glass, and a
notebook. He easily assists his mother in solving the case of the
missing purse. However, when his friends lose their baseball, the young
turtle’s detective skills are really tested.

Franklin, like his friends, wants to win a blue ribbon at the local
fair. His friends plan to make scrumptious pies for the fair, and when
Franklin discovers a pumpkin behind the shed he thinks that he, too,
will be able to enter the pie contest. However, Franklin uses his
gigantic pumpkin in a unique manner to assist his sister, and in the end
both Franklin and his sister win blue ribbons at the fair.

The stories in these Level 2 readers are from episodes of the animated
television series Franklin, which is based on the Franklin books,
originally written by Paulette Bourgeois and illustrated by Brenda
Clark. In each book Franklin is an active and determined character who
perseveres and uses his turtle brain to solve his problems, often in an
entertaining way. Recommended.