Customer Reviews

Kids Around The World Celebrate! (Turtleback School & Library Binding Edition)

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My seven year old son needed to choose and research an international festival for a school project. This is a brilliant little book that's ideal for the 6-9 age group. It covers 16 festivals from around the world (four from the US and the rest from countries as diverse as Saudi Arabia, Italy, Nigeria, Barbados, Israel and China). The festivals are grouped into four categories: New Year festivals, celebrating before and after fasts, giving thanks and renewing the spirit. For each festival it talks about the historical background, what people are celebrating, how they celebrate and the kinds of foods and decorations that they use. Then for each celebration there is a craft activity and a recipe.

As examples, for Ano Viejo (an Ecuardorian New Year festival) there are simple instructions for making an Ano Viejo puppet and making fruit salad. For the Japanese Festival of the Dead, children can make paper lanterns and soba noodle soup. For Pongal (a Hindu thanksgiving festival celebrated in south-eastern India), children can make a rice based pongal feast and a garland of bells for their pets. For the Brazilian Mardi Gras, children can make a Samba school flag and a Coconut Cooler drink. In all cases, the materials and ingredients are readily obtainable.

The book is written in a very engaging way and I learned a lot reading it, even about festivals that I thought I already had a good understanding of. I highly recommend this as a way to encourage your children to learn more about the world around us and its many religions, as well as being a terrific source of fun craft activities. The only improvement that I would make is a calendar to show approximately when these festivals fall within the year.

We were looking for something to do with our twins the other night and made a recipe for Chinese new year from this book. It was delicious and lots of fun to do together. Plus the kids loved doing the activities. Highly reccomended.

My daughter and I just made date nut cookies from a recipe in this book. They ended up being disasterous and a rather expensive mistake to make. The ingredient proportions and the oven temperature we obviously incorrect.