That quick-witted girl with the flyaway golden hair returns for her third original tale set a century ago in a northwoods logging community. When Beatrice meets three new friends from the big city of Montreal, she tells them, in her confident manner, all about Père Noël. To counteract the disbelief of her new friends, she promises to bring them a bell from Père Noël’s sleigh, a button from his cape and a curl from his beard. Beatrice waits up for Père Noël on Christmas Eve and handles him in her own inventive way, snipping off each of the three promised items of proof with plausible reasons for her acquisitions. Père Noël is a resplendent figure in white robes who shows his wise understanding of little girls. Solomon’s carefully researched watercolor illustrations show how Beatrice and her mother celebrate their holiday with French-Canadian traditions such as a homemade Bûche de Noël and an outdoor Christmas Eve feast before midnight mass. The old-fashioned cadences of the story and the muted, folk-art style of the illustrations complement each other perfectly in another winning entry in this clever and original series. (Picture book. 4-8)
Pub Date: Oct. 3, 2006
ISBN: 0-689-87017-5
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Atheneum
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2006
Shines a triumphant spotlight on Day of the Dead festivities.
A brown-skinned Latine family prepares for and then celebrates the Day of the Dead.
Mar, Paz, and their parents have much to do to get ready to welcome family for the big celebration: getting marigolds and sugar skulls at the market, making almond cookies, and writing poems. There are special revelations about ways in which the children are like their grandfather and great-grandmother as well as singing and dancing. At the heart of it all, Abuelita is greeted joyfully and shares family stories. The illustrations are appropriately brightly colored and show off many of the elements of the Day of the Dead. The special marigolds, skulls, and symbolic monarch butterflies thread across pages, tying the celebration and the living and the dead together. Aranda explains why the holiday matters as well as the importance of learning about and preserving ancestral memories. Her text contains just enough information to be beneficial to young readers without overwhelming them. The nuances of the connections between ancestors and current generations, and between lost loved ones and living ones, are expertly captured. Above all, the story centers on the joys of family and tradition. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
Shines a triumphant spotlight on Day of the Dead festivities. (author’s note) (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: Sept. 27, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-525-51428-2
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Nancy Paulsen Books
Review Posted Online: June 21, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2022
A good-enough introduction to a contested festivity but one that’s not in step with the community it’s for.
An overview of the modern African-American holiday.
This book arrives at a time when black people in the United States have had intraracial—some serious, some snarky—conversations about Kwanzaa’s relevance nowadays, from its patchwork inspiration that flattens the cultural diversity of the African continent to a single festive story to, relatedly, the earnest blacker-than-thou pretentiousness surrounding it. Both the author and consultant Keith A. Mayes take great pains—and in painfully simplistic language—to provide a context that attempts to refute the internal arguments as much as it informs its intended audience. In fact, Mayes says in the endnotes that young people are Kwanzaa’s “largest audience and most important constituents” and further extends an invitation to all races and ages to join the winter celebration. However, his “young people represent the future” counterpoint—and the book itself—really responds to an echo of an argument, as black communities have moved the conversation out to listen to African communities who critique the holiday’s loose “African-ness” and deep American-ness and moved on to commemorate holidays that have a more historical base in black people’s experiences in the United States, such as Juneteenth. In this context, the explications of Kwanzaa’s principles and symbols and the smattering of accompanying activities feel out of touch.
A good-enough introduction to a contested festivity but one that’s not in step with the community it’s for. (resources, bibliography, glossary, afterword) (Nonfiction. 5-8)Pub Date: Sept. 5, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-4263-2849-7
Page Count: 40
Publisher: National Geographic Kids
Review Posted Online: Oct. 27, 2017
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