The Pumpkin chase is a fun early reader, with cute characters, beautiful bold colourful illustrations, and an exciting prepositional chase.
When Miss Sunflower has her pumpkin pie stolen, Officers Zig and Zag promise to catch the thief.
This colourful picture book features exciting adjectives, verbs, and prepositions for early learning. Under and over, up and down, into and around, fast and slow, jumped, rolled, ran, and some manners from Miss Sunflower when the crooks are caught are all part of the learning in this fun early reader picturebook.
The Pumpkin Chase also has lots of catchy repetition which makes it a fun early reader for young children learning to read.
All this excitement as well as a tasty pumpkin pie, I can’t help thinking why not try making a pumpkin pie to get your child interested in the book? Recipies make great learning experiments with quantities and maths. This book also lends to a range of language exercises related to movement.
You can listen to The Pumpkin Chase and read along with the text in this Youtube video by Andrew Pepper:
Download the full pdf or read online by selecting the buttons below the post, or download here the epub version of The Pumpkin Chase.
If you want to use any of the text from The Pumpkin Chase, we’ve included the full text version of the ebook below.
Text from The Pumpkin Chase:
Miss Sunflower is crying.
“A thief just stole my pumpkin pie! Now what will I have for dinner?” she sobs.
“Don’t cry Miss Sunflower. We will find your pumpkin pie,” said Officer Zig. “We will catch that crook!” said Officer Zag.
“Look! There he goes!” said Officer Zig.
“Catch that crook!” said Officer Zag.
“I’m too fast and you’re too slow.
You will never catch the pumpkin pie thief!” cried the crook.
They chased him up the hill…
…but the crook was too quick.
“I’m too fast and you’re too slow. You will never catch the pumpkin pie thief!”
They chased him down the riverbank but the crook rolled away.
“I’m too fast and you’re too slow. You will never catch the pumpkin pie thief!”
They chased him under the bridge…
…but the crook swam away.
“I’m too fast and you’re too slow. You will never catch the pumpkin pie thief!”
They chased him over the fires…
…but the crook jumped too high.
“I’m too fast and you’re too slow. You will never catch the pumpkin pie thief!”
They chased him around the tree but they could not catch the crook.
“I’m too fast and you’re too slow. You will never catch the pumpkin pie thief!”
Officer Zig and Officer Zag did not give up. They ran and ran and ran until…
SPLAT! They chased him right into a wall!
“Hurray! We caught the crook!” said the cops.
Officer Zig and Officer Zag returned the pumpkin pie to Miss Sunflower.
“Thank you very much,” said Miss Sunflower.
Dinner time!
<End of Book – The Pumpkin Chase>
This is another great creative commons book brought to us by BookDash, a South African non-profit organisation, dedicated to solving literacy problems by creating good quality free creative commons children’s books. Bookdash believes every child should have access to enough books.
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very efficient for non english speaking kids
good
I liked this book because of the repetition of the antagonists’ words. I use this website to help me teach English and having repetition in the stories helps a lot. Thank you for this resource
Hi Eileen, thanks so much for your comment, I am very glad you can use the resources to help your students, I find the same when I learn German (https://freekidsbooks.org/subject/files/foreign-language/German) , that simple repetitive language helps, Check out our “Early Reader” https://freekidsbooks.org/subject/early-reader/ collection, these are chosen for the aspects of repetition and simplicity of language for getting the basics in ESL and lots of fun topics.
Yes,I did enjoy the book very well, It teaches me that The Officers Twins Zig and Zag were trying to get the pumpkin pie from The Crook,and they helped Miss Sunflower to finally get her Pumpkin back.
You’ve got a great grasp of the story! Great to hear you enjoyed it.
Grandkids liked it, I do wish page filled screen on my tablet.
Hi Katie, we’re working on this, I think if you download it, then it works best for full screen viewing on tablets – the online is a little inflexible between devices, but an epub version of files might be in the works.
nice but prints are too small.
Yes my daughter loved it!
I love the book
Hi, kindly is it possible i be getting the free downloadable story books in my mail for my 6 and 9 years old daughters. Thank you
I ENJOYED THIS BECAUSE I HAVE TWO CHILDREN WHO LOVE READING
It’s a simple story with varied vocabulary.
Fun little read. We found this site as we are traveling and forgot to bring a bedtime book. Glad it’s free as well.
Yes, I think it’s a perfect resource for traveling! No need to carry books, we’ve got over 500 books and adding all the time, so there’s always something to find for a great bedtime read. Classics too.
we love the picture book very much; and could you kindly tell us how to download the recording audios for the picture book for free? thank you very much
Hi, sorry we don’t have audio yet unless the video has been linked in the post, but you can look on youtube for the title some of them are available.