Just in case you are counting, today is my seventh of twelve Christmas book posts. I have already picked out the remaining five books and am set to post one per day, concluding on Christmas Eve with Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. To be perfectly honest, I really don’t know what to make of Mary D. Lankford and Karen Dugan’s Christmas USA. The red, white and blue star-spangled color scheme seems more suited to Independence Day on the 4th of July rather than Christmas. And the drawing of a gingerbread house with an American flag roof is downright off-putting.
Part history lesson, part crafts manual, part cookbook, this juvenile non-fiction title explores the Christmas traditions of seven regions of the United States as well as sections on Christmas at the White House and Christmas at the Post Office. Lankford devotes two pages each to the Northeast, Southeast, Great Lakes, Mountain States, Plains States, Southwest and Pacific States giving a history of Christmas celebrations associated with each region. The book is filled with many odd little facts but does not in my opinion convey more than a vague impression of celebrations as diverse as a town in New Hampshire that faithfully recreates a circa 1850’s Christmas for tourists each December and a Hawaiian whose Christmas greeting reportedly has evolved some 16 times since the missionaries first brought Christmas to the Islands from "Ka Nupepe Ku’oko’a" in 1876 to the "Mele Kalikimaka" used today.
Following the history pages is a section devoted to craft suggestions such as a sachet made by studding an orange with cloves and rubbing spices into it, then drying it out wrapped in paper in a dry, dark closet for a month, then festooning the orange with decorative ribbon or instructions for making Cascarones, elbaorately decorated confetti eggs said to be part of Californias Christmas tradition. None of the projects particularly appealed to me, and I’m honestly unable to gage how appealing they might be to a grade shooler.
The final section of the book consists of a few pages of recipes for cookies and cakes and a time line of popular toys through the ages from Cap guns in 1859 to Sponge Bob Square Pants in 2003. Much like The Old Shepards Tale (review here), this one in the end seemed just too "alternative" for my tastes. But in this case I really can’t imagine that this mixed up book that veers erratically from the patriotic to the religious to the civic and even more awkwardly attempts history lesson, crafts lesson and cookbook without ever quite nailing any of these themes or ambitions would appeal to Any reader. Not Recommended.
Tags: Book Reviews, Books, Christmas, Christmas USA, Juvenlie Non-Fiction, Karen Dugan, Mary D Lankford
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