Reading order
| # | Title | Published | Author | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Pumpkinheads | 2019 | Rainbow Rowell | Buy |
Pumpkinheads came out in August 2019 and hit the New York Times bestseller list, which was a fair indicator that Rowell’s audience would follow her into graphic novel territory. The book was developed with illustrator Faith Erin Hicks, and the two brought complementary strengths: Rowell’s ear for the way friends talk to each other, and Hicks’s ability to convey emotion through body language and expression across a page.
The story takes place over a single shift at a Nebraska pumpkin patch during Halloween season. Deja and Josiah have worked there every autumn throughout high school, becoming close friends in the way that seasonal jobs produce close friendships, with an intensity that only exists within those specific hours and fades back to ordinary life the rest of the year. This is their last Halloween, both heading off to college, and Josiah decides he needs to finally talk to the girl who works the fudge booth before the season ends.
It is a small story, very deliberately so, told in a single day at a single location, and Hicks makes the most of the setting’s visual possibilities: the orange light, the crowds, the different stations of the pumpkin patch that become a sort of map of the day. Pumpkinheads won the Goodreads Choice Award and remains the only graphic novel on Rowell’s list outside her Marvel work.