17 Christmases

September 1, 2010

An eight-year-old boy narrates this first-person story in lockstep rhyme about his family's cross-country travels to celebrate Christmas with far-flung relatives and friends. They start in California and zigzag back and forth across the United States for 17 Christmas celebrations with grandparents, cousins, aunts, uncles and friends, before returning to their own home in Kentucky in January. The text has a strong Evangelical Christian slant, with many references to Jesus and the Nativity story as well as praying "that Christ's love spreads to all of the nations!" Bright illustrations in deep hues depict the crowd of relatives and the family's trusty station wagon buzzing along from state to state (with little sense of fuel economy, greenhouse-gas emissions or geographic logic). Endpaper maps show smiling relatives standing in their appropriate locations, though the states are not identified. (Picture book. 5-9)

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January 1, 2011
A family drives back and forth across the country visiting seventeen sets of relatives to celebrate Christmas in both religious and secular ways. Their travels take them to, among other places, Southern California, Alaska, and Maine. Noiset's somewhat garish illustrations, though warm, lack visual focus. Mackall's rhyming text tends to generalize and is little more than a list of holiday activities.

(Copyright 2011 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)