Monday, December 3, 2012

Christmas 3

I liked this one because it is NOT about Santa and NOT about the spirit of giving.  This one is set with an immigrant family in New York during the early 1900s.  Pennies are dear and putting enough of them away to buy a proper Christmas dinner is important.  Some weeks before Christmas Mama sends Papa out to buy  a half pound of flour and two eggs.  He comes home with a turkey poult to raise for their Christmas dinner.  "Think of the money we'll save!"  Well, raising a turkey in a tenement apartment, with Christmas looming,  is full of issues.

I loved the attention to detail author/illustrator Brock Cole put into his drawings.  I have many books of photographs by Jacob Riis showing the immigrant/tenement condition and Mr. Cole was fastidious in his detail.  I told the kids when I read it to them last week, "this means the author/illustrator did his homework. What he is showing is true."  Fanciful and colorful but true.  That counts for me.  This book was the one that rose to the top last year with booksellers, the publisher and reviewers.

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