PARADE DAY
Marching Through the Calendar Year
by Bob Barner & illustrated by Bob Barner
From Rose Bowl to Christmas, Barner (Stars! Stars! Stars!, 2002, etc.) marches readers through the 12 months, invoking or inventing a parade for each, then closes with brief tallies of holidays and calendars, plus instructions for drawing a calendar page. A multicultural cast in seasonal and festive dress steps across Barner’s brightly colored, cut-paper collages, but “brief” is the watchword; the author names holidays but seldom explains why they’re celebrated—or even, in the cases of Winter Carnival, Hanukkah, and Kwanzaa, where or by whom. He also holds an April ticker-tape parade at night, and though he mentions New York City’s annual Halloween Parade, he depicts a bland, generic event featuring costumed children—not the real thing. Though this makes a rousing way of introducing both the year’s measure and its recurrent celebrations, younger audiences especially are going to need some follow-up discussion. (Picture book. 5-7)