1980s Cricket magazine story about pumpkins
July 21, 2020 9:16 AM   Subscribe

This was probably in a Halloween issue of Cricket -- it was a story about a pumpkin vine/patch that attacked a person (neighbor?) who didn't like the unruliness of pumpkin vines and had possibly tried to cut them back. Not sure if the pumpkins killed the person or just chased them away.

Cricket's online archives don't seem to go back before the 2010s.

Looking for an author, title and date -- although if the full text is out there in some form that would be amazing.
posted by Not A Thing to Writing & Language (6 answers total) 6 users marked this as a favorite
 
Not a very satisfying answer, but you could see if the folks in the archives at Southern Illinois U can help you, as they hold the Cricket Media collection. It doesn't look like they've published any digitized back issues, but they may have digital media files for each issue in their operational files.

Alternately, if you don't get any traction on AskMe, you could post your question to the Stump the Bookseller blog.
posted by codhavereturned at 3:52 PM on July 21, 2020 [1 favorite]


memail donnagirl? (because of this previous askme miracle)
posted by bunnysquirrel at 8:44 PM on July 21, 2020


Best answer: So my parents happen to have kept nearly every issue of Cricket that was delivered to our household, which covers pretty much all of the '80s, and then some. I took a super-quick glance through some of the October issues, and I think this story from October 1983 is a good candidate:

The Pumpkins of Witch Crunch, by Margaret Mahy

Here's a quick snap of one of the pages. If that's looking like a good match, let me know and I'll snap or scan the whole story for you!
posted by alyxstarr at 9:30 AM on July 22, 2020 [3 favorites]


Response by poster: Yes, that is 100% the one! Thank you!
posted by Not A Thing at 10:13 AM on July 22, 2020


Here you go. Now you (and anyone else who's now intrigued) can learn the fate of Mr. Maverick-Mace. ;-)
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posted by alyxstarr at 10:38 AM on July 23, 2020 [2 favorites]


Response by poster: Yayyy! Thank you so much! I see the ending is a bit different than what my memories had conjured up.
posted by Not A Thing at 10:47 AM on July 23, 2020


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