“When the world isn’t selling what you’re looking to buy, you just have to take it upon yourself to cut your own pattern” (Murphy 305). 

So much YA is coming-of-age stories, and Pumpkin by Julie Murphy is no exception to that rule. Since adolescence is a time of identity formation it’s really no big surprise that YA novels focus on protagonists accepting or rejecting identities–either identities they’ve formed or those thrust upon them by the world–and finding their place in their world.