A work that creatively updates the Santa Claus mythos.
Buchta’s illustrated children’s book tells a new origin story for a well-known holiday figure.
In a quaint, unnamed village town,there’s an orphanage where every child is happy and well cared for. The entire village chips in each year for a beautiful, festive Christmas celebration in which every child gets the opportunity to pick out a present from a large pile. Lucas Astan, the youngest, chooses the smallest gift: a beautiful, miniature wooden sleigh, which he loves. Late in the evening, a very tall man drops a sad young girl off at the orphanage. In an effort to make her feel welcome, Lucas decides to give her his precious sleigh. This moment serves as the catalyst for the rest of the boy’s notable life. Soon, the Spirit of Giving appears to him and praises his kindness, promising to make his wishes come true. She magically brings Lucas to a wintry place: the North Pole. Young readers will quickly understand that Lucas’ reward is to become Santa Claus. The Spirit intriguingly explains that a large storm of stardust and snowflakes created the omniscient elves who inhabit the North Pole. It turns out that the elves created the Naughty and Nice lists, which is an offbeat spin on the traditional Santa tale; so, too, is the fact that Santa’s sleigh is a life-size version of the one that Lucas gave away. The skillfully executed, full-color painterly illustrations are quite realistic, featuring characters with a range of skin tones; Lucas is depicted with pale skin. Confusingly, though, on one two-page spread, the characters’ faces look morose while the text describes a festive atmosphere.
A work that creatively updates the Santa Claus mythos.Pub Date: Oct. 5, 2023
ISBN: 9798986989525
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Warbucks
Review Posted Online: Sept. 27, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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