DePaola offers a montage of Christmas memories from his earliest days as a toddler in a high chair, captured in home movies, right up to his current celebrations in his home in New Hampshire. He includes memories of family parties in his childhood home on Fairmount Avenue, helping out in a candy shop and a special Christmas when he received a full complement of art supplies to nurture his budding talent. Each stage of his life is captured with glimpses of his Christmas celebrations: singing in high school concerts, shopping as an art student in New York City and preparing for the holiday as a young novice at a Benedictine monastery in Vermont. Other chapters describe his time as a grad student in San Francisco, a visit to Santa Fe and a Christmas in New York as an adult. Full-page illustrations of holiday subjects in dePaola’s distinctive style alternate with spot illustrations of Christmas scenes, with a polka-dot border accenting the pages. While the stories from his childhood will interest younger readers, most of the volume will be of more interest to dePaola’s adult fans and those doing author studies. (Nonfiction. 10-adult)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-399-24622-3
Page Count: 96
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2006
Little Blue’s fans will enjoy the animal sounds and counting opportunities, but it’s the sparkling lights on the truck’s own...
The sturdy Little Blue Truck is back for his third adventure, this time delivering Christmas trees to his band of animal pals.
The truck is decked out for the season with a Christmas wreath that suggests a nose between headlights acting as eyeballs. Little Blue loads up with trees at Toad’s Trees, where five trees are marked with numbered tags. These five trees are counted and arithmetically manipulated in various ways throughout the rhyming story as they are dropped off one by one to Little Blue’s friends. The final tree is reserved for the truck’s own use at his garage home, where he is welcomed back by the tree salestoad in a neatly circular fashion. The last tree is already decorated, and Little Blue gets a surprise along with readers, as tiny lights embedded in the illustrations sparkle for a few seconds when the last page is turned. Though it’s a gimmick, it’s a pleasant surprise, and it fits with the retro atmosphere of the snowy country scenes. The short, rhyming text is accented with colored highlights, red for the animal sounds and bright green for the numerical words in the Christmas-tree countdown.
Little Blue’s fans will enjoy the animal sounds and counting opportunities, but it’s the sparkling lights on the truck’s own tree that will put a twinkle in a toddler’s eyes. (Picture book. 2-5)Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-544-32041-3
Page Count: 24
Publisher: HMH Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 11, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2014
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Turkey’s in the “kind of trouble where it’s almost Thanksgiving...and you’re the main course.” Accordingly, Turkey tries on disguise after disguise, from horse to cow to pig to sheep, at each iteration being told that he looks nothing like the animal he’s trying to mimic (which is quite true, as Harper’s quirky watercolors make crystal clear). He desperately squeezes a red rubber glove onto his head to pass as a rooster, only to overhear the farmer suggest a poultry plan B when he’s unable to turn up the turkey. Turkey’s horrified expression as he stands among the peppers and tomatoes—in November? Chalk it up to artistic license—is priceless, but his surroundings give him an idea. Good fun, but it may lead to a vegetarian table or two. (Picture book. 4-8)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-7614-5529-5
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Marshall Cavendish
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2009
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