Book Review--Extreme Pumpkins II

Extreme Pumpkins II by Tom Nardone (Penguin Group, 2008)

The Problem Child Pumpkin (pictured above).  The Angry Mob Pumpkin.  The (literally) Barbecued Pumpkin.  The Full-Diaper Pumpkin.  The Subliminal Message Pumpkin.  These are NOT your mother and father's jack-o'-lanterns.  Carving maestro Tom Nardone proves more Johnny Knoxville than Martha Stewart here, as he serves up a batch of renegade gourds (pumpkins and squash) reconfigured to be "tasteless, terrifying, and outrageous."

The book offers detailed instructions for creating (either using power tools or hand tools) 20 arresting displays.  This is no dry-as-old-straw manual, though; Nardone's wit saturates the pages.  For instance, when explaining how to design the Foul-Play Pumpkin (which features an actual baseball embedded in the jack-o'-lantern's eye socket), Nardone notes the need for a snug fit: "If the hole is too small (as it should be), SHAVE away the pumpkin skin around it little by little until you get it just right.  If the hole is too big, go find a softball (ha, ha).  If it's too big for a softball, go find a basketball and paint it white, and then go see an optometrist."  When discussing how to create the signature effect of the Snot-Shooting Pumpkin, the author directs readers to "THREAD some pumpkin guts and chunks onto the wire.  Think of it as a big snot kabob. Yum!"  Perhaps even more entertaining than the carving instructions are the sidebars brimming with trivia and tips both festive-minded (e.g. how to host "The Ultimate Pumpkin-Carving Party") and mischievous (e.g. "How to Deal With Teenage Trick-or-Treaters").

Nardone no doubt revels in the grotesque, but his work stems from a simple desire to have fun with Halloween.   Readers, in turn, will have a blast with this humorously written book, even if they have no intention of ever attempting the carvings described.  Informative and picture-rich, Extreme Pumpkins II: Take Back Halloween and Freak Out a Few More Neighbors is a must-have for unabashed October lovers.

Note: Nardone is also the author of 2007's Extreme Pumpkins: Diabolical Do-It-Yourself Designs to Amuse Your Friends and Scare Your Neighbors and 2009's Extreme Halloween: The Ultimate Guide to Making Halloween Scary Again--two books I'm eager to check out after reading Extreme Pumpkins II.  Photographic evidence of Nardone's mad genius can also be found on the author's website, Extremepumpkins.com.