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 prime candidate for a destination party.
Why celebrate for just 24 hours on Earth when our nearest neighbor has a 709-hour day?
Sure, balloons won’t float and the near lack of atmosphere also means that everyone has to wear special suits—but the low gravity makes gymnastics a snap, it’s easy to catch the candy as it falls from the piñata, and a batted baseball really travels! Expanding on the fanciful bits with boxed blocks of factual commentary, Lapin accurately describes lunar conditions—explaining, for instance, why the sky is black rather than blue and noting that earthshine is 40 times brighter than moonglow—while suggesting expeditions to check out craters and maria, having a scavenger hunt to track down artifacts left by the Apollo astronauts (two golf balls, 12 pairs of space boots, a rumored “rude drawing”), and chowing down on “a Space Station favorite,” chocolate-pudding cake squeezed from a foil pouch. Ceccarelli adds jolly notes aplenty with painted scenes of young partiers (an inclusive lot, featuring one with Asian features and several people of color) zinging exuberantly around in zero gravity, cavorting or making dust angels on the lunar surface, and gathering back at their spacecraft as a pizza-delivery rocket lands nearby before they all blast off for home. The author reserves generous slices of print and web resources at the end for readers who couldn’t make the voyage.
A prime candidate for a destination party. (glossary, bibliography) (Informational picture book. 6-9)Pub Date: April 23, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4549-2970-3
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Sterling
Review Posted Online: Jan. 14, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
Tidings of comfort and joy laid on with a trowel but not much regard for texts or traditions.
A version of the Nativity story with 10 narrative or musical sound clips followed by abbreviated Bible stories and devotional thoughts for each day of Advent.
Drawn from Lloyd-Jones’ The Jesus Storybook Bible (2007) with some anonymous interstitial text, the stories begin with a young girl “minding her own business” until Gabriel drops in to give her the heads-up: “He’s the One! He’s the Rescuer!” In Jago’s harmonious, cleanly drawn cartoon illustrations, most of the human characters have brown skin in a variety of shades, including (eventually) a brown-skinned baby Jesus, whose head is topped with tight, black curls. The familiar tale continues up to the appearance of “three clever men” from the East (one cued as East Asian with stereotypical Fu Manchu facial hair) in Bethlehem. It is punctuated with pressure-sensitive spots that each activate 15 to 20 seconds of either a well-known Christmas hymn or a reading by David Suchet in a plummy British accent. Twenty-four shorter daily episodes, mostly Old Testament passages with the gory bits left out, follow to offer (purported) prefigurations of God’s “Secret Rescue Plan” as revealed in the New. These range from a massacre-free version of Joshua’s entry into Jericho and (wait for it) “Daniel and the Scary Sleepover” to the parting of the Red Sea, which is incorrectly identified as the origin of Passover.
Tidings of comfort and joy laid on with a trowel but not much regard for texts or traditions. (Novelty/religion. 6-8)Pub Date: Nov. 10, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-310-76990-3
Page Count: 24
Publisher: Zonderkidz
Review Posted Online: Nov. 26, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2020
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