An inclusive, accessible interpretation of O. Henry’s beloved story and a “perfect gift” for families who celebrate both...
A pair of big-city bears celebrates Hanukkah and Christmas Eve in their shared apartment in this sweet, age-appropriate story that borrows the structure of O. Henry’s classic Christmas story, “The Gift of the Magi.”
Boris is a musician who grew up in Russia; he celebrates Hanukkah. Stella is a baker whose family came from Italy; she celebrates Christmas. Each wants to buy a special present for the other for the holiday, but both bears have just a few coins in their individual banks. Stella sells her small but beloved Christmas tree, growing outside in a pot on their balcony, and uses the proceeds to buy a new dreidel from Israel for Boris. At the same time, Boris sells his dreidel collection to buy a sparkling glass star for the top of Stella’s tree. Inviting illustrations are filled with the details of the bears’ cozy apartment and their joint celebration of the eighth night of Hanukkah and Christmas Eve, complete with potato latkes and Italian panettone cake. A neat, touching conclusion shows the bears celebrating and making plans for starting a new collection of dreidels, as well as growing a new Christmas tree with seeds from a pine cone from the original tree.
An inclusive, accessible interpretation of O. Henry’s beloved story and a “perfect gift” for families who celebrate both Christmas and Hanukkah. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-58536-859-4
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Sleeping Bear Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 13, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2013
As ephemeral as a valentine.
Daywalt and Jeffers’ wandering crayons explore love.
Each double-page spread offers readers a vision of one of the anthropomorphic crayons on the left along with the statement “Love is [color].” The word love is represented by a small heart in the appropriate color. Opposite, childlike crayon drawings explain how that color represents love. So, readers learn, “love is green. / Because love is helpful.” The accompanying crayon drawing depicts two alligators, one holding a recycling bin and the other tossing a plastic cup into it, offering readers two ways of understanding green. Some statements are thought-provoking: “Love is white. / Because sometimes love is hard to see,” reaches beyond the immediate image of a cat’s yellow eyes, pink nose, and black mouth and whiskers, its white face and body indistinguishable from the paper it’s drawn on, to prompt real questions. “Love is brown. / Because sometimes love stinks,” on the other hand, depicted by a brown bear standing next to a brown, squiggly turd, may provoke giggles but is fundamentally a cheap laugh. Some of the color assignments have a distinctly arbitrary feel: Why is purple associated with the imagination and pink with silliness? Fans of The Day the Crayons Quit (2013) hoping for more clever, metaliterary fun will be disappointed by this rather syrupy read.
As ephemeral as a valentine. (Picture book. 4-6)Pub Date: Dec. 24, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5247-9268-8
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2021
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SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Pete’s fans might find it groovy; anyone else has plenty of other “12 Days of Christmas” variants to choose among
Pete, the cat who couldn’t care less, celebrates Christmas with his inimitable lassitude.
If it weren’t part of the title and repeated on every other page, readers unfamiliar with Pete’s shtick might have a hard time arriving at “groovy” to describe his Christmas celebration, as the expressionless cat displays not a hint of groove in Dean’s now-trademark illustrations. Nor does Pete have a great sense of scansion: “On the first day of Christmas, / Pete gave to me… / A road trip to the sea. / GROOVY!” The cat is shown at the wheel of a yellow microbus strung with garland and lights and with a star-topped tree tied to its roof. On the second day of Christmas Pete gives “me” (here depicted as a gray squirrel who gets on the bus) “2 fuzzy gloves, and a road trip to the sea. / GROOVY!” On the third day, he gives “me” (now a white cat who joins Pete and the squirrel) “3 yummy cupcakes,” etc. The “me” mentioned in the lyrics changes from day to day and gift to gift, with “4 far-out surfboards” (a frog), “5 onion rings” (crocodile), and “6 skateboards rolling” (a yellow bird that shares its skateboards with the white cat, the squirrel, the frog, and the crocodile while Pete drives on). Gifts and animals pile on until the microbus finally arrives at the seaside and readers are told yet again that it’s all “GROOVY!”
Pete’s fans might find it groovy; anyone else has plenty of other “12 Days of Christmas” variants to choose among . (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Sept. 18, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-06-267527-9
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Aug. 19, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2018
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