An inclusive, secular-leaning panorama with a simple but clever visual gimmick.
The focus is on food and fun in this yearly round of international holidays.
Beginning with Lunar New Year—properly designated an Asian celebration rather than just Chinese—the roughly chronological tally offers a mix of 16 religious, civil, cultural, and even (in the case of the Spanish town of Buñol’s “La Tomatina” festival) local holidays. Brown barely and rarely alludes to religious origins and rituals (presenting Easter, for instance, though an “important Christian holiday,” as all about hunting eggs, which are “a symbol of new life and new beginnings”) but places festive gatherings for food and frolic front and center. Konak follows suit, depicting smiling groups around tables for Eid and at a Passover seder, picnicking beneath cherry blossoms for Hanami in Japan, crowding along the green Chicago River on St. Patrick’s Day, and chucking powdered paint at one another for the Hindu festival of Holi. The groups are diverse both racially and in styles of dress. Like other entries in the Shine-a-Light series, most of the illustrations are backed with white areas and print on a solid black background so that holding the colored pages up to a light reveals hidden details. Notes at the back supply a few additional bits about each of the holidays except, oddly, the closing scene of midnight fireworks on one of the many other New Years, Jan. 1.
An inclusive, secular-leaning panorama with a simple but clever visual gimmick. (Informational novelty. 6-8)Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-68464-281-6
Page Count: 36
Publisher: Kane Miller
Review Posted Online: Sept. 23, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2021
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
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
