Customer Reviews

Lights of Winter: Winter Celebrations Around the World

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

This book is full of wonderful information that is accessible to children and interesting to adults. It provides a respectful description of ten of the many historical and contemporary mid-winter celebrations of the world and highlights their commonality. The text and illustrations are beautiful. I sent it to be read to my seven year-old's Girl Scout troop, where the children were enthralled by it. My daughter was delighted when she learned afterwards that we had a copy at home.

Finally here is a book that explores the Holidays for all cultures, all people. I am raising my son to respect other cultures and their traditions. I loved how this book honored our differences and also showed how much we have in common. I have given this book to friends and they love it also. My son's teacher borrowed our copy to read to her class and she told me it was a wonderful way to expose the children to different cultures. This is a great book and I am very glad it is part of our family library!!!

I was given a copy of this book, and fell in love immediately. The first impact is made by utterly gorgeous illustrations, in clean bright colors--simple, but not at all primitive. Next you are charmed by the IDEA of the book, which assembles various festivals of light from around the world. You really can see that we are a human "family," with the same instincts toward celebration, and the same need to be reassured that "spring will come again." Third, but not the least of the pleasures is the writing, which is simple and easy to read aloud, without being condescending the way so many kid's books are.

If I have any criticism of this book, it is that I would have liked it to last longer--I hope next time the author writes a longer book, to give me even more enjoyment.

I was saddened to discover this book is a poor tool for information on the extremly important subject matter. I will not keep this book as it would have to ad lib through much of the content to make up for lack of information and misleading words. I am unable to regift it as I do not endorse the book.

An example of incorrect infomation- The African flag is described to explain the colors of the candles used in celebrating Kwanza. There is no African flag....there are flags of the African countries and each has it's own color scheme.
Yule is written in past tense as if this holiday is no longer celebrated. The name used to describe the people, Pagan, is not defined.
Winter Solstice is used again and again but never explained as a holiday of Light but as a way to describe Yule.
I am now suspect of all of the other information as misleading. I will not read this book.

Nine winter holidays are covered. Each has a short paragraph and an illustration. The information is very shallow. You don't do much more than learn the name of the holiday, where it is and a couple of things associated with celebrating it.

The artwork appears to be computer graphics made to look like folkart, creates a homey-folksy feeling that we associate with holidays. Large clear text is easy to read. The binding and glossy pages appear to be of good quality.

Its a pretty good book, but I wish I could rewrite the first couple of pages. My study of the ancients makes me believe they were much more sophisticated than to think the sun was hiding because it was angry with them. I'm more inclined to believe it was a celebration of the mystery of the cycle of death and life. And I really don't think this is true at all "people couldn't go outside after the sun set. It was too dark." Oh please. We may be that cowardly, but I really doubt that they were. I don't want someone to not buy this book because of this. I doubt the other books on the subject are better, but please help your child know that the ancients were very intelligent people with sophisticated cultures and not a bunch of stereotypical cavemen.

I bought this book for my preschooler son to share with his class. Since it arrived yesterday, he has requested me to read it to him twice. The book features short descriptions of 10 winter holidays, written in simple language that is easily understood by preschoolers. While the pictures are of poor computer art quality (think MS Paint), my son enjoyed them and said one looked like a scene from the game Runescape. This is a nice book to share with children, and does a nice job of introducing children to the different Winter holidays people celebrate.

I had high hopes for this book. While it manages to name most of the winter holidays and many different cultures, it contains grammatical errors and factual errors. The illustrations are horrendous. They are horribly pixilated computer-generated illustrations that lack any beauty or grace. If you can edit on the fly while reading, this may be one to borrow from the library as a very first introduction to the many winter holidays.

I have been looking for a couple of years for a book that I can use to introduce religious diversity to our kids. All of the books on different religions that I checked out were too complex and beyond their age. Same with the books on the Winter Solstice. I needed to start with something short and simple. This book is exactly what I have been looking for.

I was so disappointed with this book -- it sounded so promising! As a UU Sunday school teacher, I'm always looking for books like this that take an interfaith look at holidays. The text is brief and to the point, but the look of the book is terrible. The illustrations are just horrible -- blurry, primitive computer-generated graphics that are difficult to puzzle out, while the super-glossy pages reflect light in an annoying way. I was also very disappointed with the section on "Yule" that suggested that this holiday only occurred long ago with no one actually celebrating it today. Since the pictures are what draw children to pay attention to a story, I just can't recommend this book.

Lights of Winter is an excellent children's' book. It tells kids about all the holidays people from all different cultures celebrate in the winter. Not only that, but it has wonderful illustrations to really get the idea of that holiday in peoples' heads. The language in this book is wonderful and descriptive. It covers most big cultures, and I think, as a child of 14 years old, is a pleasure to read.