Safe—if unexceptional of content (and physically problematic in library settings).
A front-cover advent calendar with die-cut flaps cues 24 seasonal activities for the run-up to Christmas.
Between guidelines for a letter to Santa on Dec. 1 and the full text of “ ’Twas the Night Before Christmas” on Dec. 24, Hickey assembles a mix of amusements. These include games, recipes, luminarias and other crafts, jokes (“How does a sheep say ‘Merry Christmas’?” “Fleece Navidad!”), and songs—plus retold versions of “The Elves and the Shoemaker” and The Nutcracker. The illustrations, as cozy as the contents, offer festoons of evergreens and ornaments and depictions of tidy homes and small businesses nestled closely together in snowy landscapes; yummy treats; and wrapped gifts. Sweater-clad figures (both white and people of color) celebrate in various combinations before all coming together in a crowded living room to open presents on Christmas morning. Except for the occasional carol and hanging star, it’s a secularized and nonsectarian view of the holiday season, but the values of sharing, giving, eating together, and otherwise valuing family and community all receive proper notice. With the exception of the luminarias, traditions depicted skew toward generic Western European/North American observances.
Safe—if unexceptional of content (and physically problematic in library settings). (Novelty anthology. 6-9)Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4521-7407-5
Page Count: 72
Publisher: Chronicle Books
Review Posted Online: Sept. 28, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2019
A heartwarming slice of neighborly love, caring, and sharing.
A Jewish man and his family perform good deeds for non-Jews on Christmas Eve.
Al Rosen, who celebrates Hanukkah, loves Christmas, a holiday of “peace on earth and goodwill to humanity.” He does good deeds, or mitzvahs, for neighbors, at first taking the Christmas Eve shift at the local newsstand so the regular clerk can spend the night with his family. Later he goes on the radio to volunteer to work for Christians on Christmas Eve. His labors take him from grocery store to mail room to parking lot to barn. For many years he performs these many different jobs by himself and sometimes with his son and grandchildren, becoming a “local legend.” People of other faiths, Christian and Muslim, then return the favor on the Jewish High Holidays for Al and his family. But “years piled up like drifts in a blizzard,” and one year Al is too old—but in a grand finale, all join together to light the Hanukkah menorah: It’s a veritable “throng of God’s children.” An author’s note references the real Al Rosen of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, who performed these acts starting in 1969. The brightly colored, busy illustrations fill the pages with a nicely diverse collection of active and energetic folk working and smiling as a community.
A heartwarming slice of neighborly love, caring, and sharing. (author's note) (Picture book. 6-9)Pub Date: Sept. 7, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-939547-94-1
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Creston
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2021
An inclusive, secular-leaning panorama with a simple but clever visual gimmick.
The focus is on food and fun in this yearly round of international holidays.
Beginning with Lunar New Year—properly designated an Asian celebration rather than just Chinese—the roughly chronological tally offers a mix of 16 religious, civil, cultural, and even (in the case of the Spanish town of Buñol’s “La Tomatina” festival) local holidays. Brown barely and rarely alludes to religious origins and rituals (presenting Easter, for instance, though an “important Christian holiday,” as all about hunting eggs, which are “a symbol of new life and new beginnings”) but places festive gatherings for food and frolic front and center. Konak follows suit, depicting smiling groups around tables for Eid and at a Passover seder, picnicking beneath cherry blossoms for Hanami in Japan, crowding along the green Chicago River on St. Patrick’s Day, and chucking powdered paint at one another for the Hindu festival of Holi. The groups are diverse both racially and in styles of dress. Like other entries in the Shine-a-Light series, most of the illustrations are backed with white areas and print on a solid black background so that holding the colored pages up to a light reveals hidden details. Notes at the back supply a few additional bits about each of the holidays except, oddly, the closing scene of midnight fireworks on one of the many other New Years, Jan. 1.
An inclusive, secular-leaning panorama with a simple but clever visual gimmick. (Informational novelty. 6-8)Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-68464-281-6
Page Count: 36
Publisher: Kane Miller
Review Posted Online: Sept. 23, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2021
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