Millie Fleur’s Pumpkin Problem – written and illustrated by Christy Mandin
Orchard Books (Scholastic), 2026
Millie Fleur’s Worst Day Ever – written and illustrated by Christy Mandin
Orchard Books (Scholastic), 2026
Millie Fleur is a an appealing child: sincere, driven, and a bit anxious. She finds ways to counteract a bad mood that sometimes surfaces as perfectionism. Millie is purposeful. In Millie Fleur’s Pumpkin Problem, which is not a traditional Halloween book, she channels environmental concerns with imagination and persistence. After all, fall is her favorite season, and she prefers the beauty and utility of a pumpkin to spring blooms, which she dismisses alliteratively as “petunias, peonies, or primroses.”
A personified garden, aptly named Shed, is part of Millie’s plan for organizing and storing her materials, but he breaks away from the routine to pursue adventure. In spite of the fact that his approach is the opposite of Millie’s the pumpkin seeds he has randomly scattered around the town send its residents a profusion of pumpkins.
At first they are pleased, but when pumpkins and their twisting vines overtake the neighborhood, Millie’s vision of a pumpkin paradise begins to look sinister. The pictures are lovely, making you wonder what exactly is the problem with this cornucopia. “Pumpkins with flat tops and pumpkins with curly mustaches” seem like a positive trend. Soon, to adapt, everyone is devising recipes and projects to keep up. Eventually, the pumpkins become compost, fulfilling Millie’s obsession beyond the season, and even promoting those flowers that she had underestimated. The book includes stickers.
Millie Fleur’s Worst Day Ever has a more provocative premise. Everyone in Garden Glen is excited about Butterbloom Fest, a kind of county fair that promises joy but puts a lot of pressure on someone like Millie. It turns out that, like many people, she suffers now and then from a case of the “morgenmuffels.” a term which Christy Mandin explains in her author’s note.
You may be familiar with the cozier hygge, the Danish concept of contentment, or maybe even the Norwegian friluftsliv for communion with nature. Morgenmuffel, on the other hand, describes someone who got up on the wrong side of the bed that day. Millie sits up, her alarm clock on the pillow, surrounded by furry and bad tempered creatures, who proceed to pull her hair, knock over baking ingredients, and literally weigh her down on the way to the festival.
But Millie isn’t the only participant to experience a gap between expectations and reality. Her friends describe their own series of mishaps. Their empathy makes everything easier to endure, culminating in a pet parade that narrowly avoids disaster. Mandin concludes by admitting that the disruptive morgenmuffel moods don’t disappear entirely, but they do become manageable with a little help from Millie’s friends. Honesty is the best policy when favorite plants, or overly hyped festivals, don’t go exactly as planned.
