JASMINE SHARES HER NEW YEAR

A Persian girl realizes that many of her friends from other cultures have their own traditions for celebrating the new year in Podemski’s picture book.

Jasmine is nervous. She and her grandmother, Mamani, are making a Haft Sin, a Persian New Year’s table display, for Jasmine’s class—but what if her friends think her family’s tradition is weird? Worse, what if they don’t like Mamani? Mamani is Jasmine’s best friend (“She always listens when Jasmine needs to talk”). Jasmine’s nervous that her class will think Mamani’s accent is funny, or will make fun of how she sometimes messes up words. But when Mamani and Jasmine start to share, Jasmine learns that classmate Bing celebrates Chinese New Year, Sarah celebrates Rosh Hashana, and Pria celebrates Diwali. While there have been other stories about family members visiting a class to share a tradition, few of them have focused to this degree on the commonalities children from various cultures share. Podemski’s approachable prose effectively introduces Haft Sin and Nowruz, the Persian New Year, drawing connections to other New Year’s meals and traditions. Podemski’s illustrations are soft-edged in a way that lacks polish—most of the elements are painterly, but some digital insertions, like geometrically rigid bookshelves and classroom tables, are jarring. The image of the Haft Sin display is the most engaging, including labels that detail the various elements.

A useful introduction to an Iranian tradition and other similar celebrations.