12 Days of Christmas

September 21, 2020
Artist Hawthorne deftly weaves together traditional and contemporary strands in a nuanced interpretation of this 18th-century French carol, with detailed, richly hued naïf art created in gouache and edited digitally. Spotlighting a young woman’s charming cottage and the lush surrounding countryside, the illustrations share the verse’s cumulative nature, initially revealing the aggregate gifts she receives each day and, in subsequent spreads, reprising them in various combinations. Joining the narrator in each scene are her dog, cat, and resident mouse, whose frisky antics young readers will enjoy spotting. Hawthorne caps off this buoyant romp with a gleeful panorama that showcases the entire cast and offers a search-and-find challenge—while the narrator and her newly pictured true love, another woman, look on. Ages 2–5.

Starred review from September 1, 2020
A veritable holiday feast for the eyes. Hawthorne's illustrations have a busy, folk-art style that will invite readers to pore over pages to find the animals, items, and people named in this old Christmas carol. Foil detailing on the cover art adds festive flair to the book's design, but readers who associate Christmastime with wintry scenes will not find snowy landscapes here. An abundant use of light green in the grounds around the country house where the action unfolds lends a fresh feel to the picture book, perhaps offering a reminder that people in warm climes and in the Southern Hemisphere celebrate Christmas, too. Also welcome is the artist's inclusion of a multiracial cast of people in later verses. Readers are invited to play an I spy sort of game with the pages, seeking out everything from the single partridge in a pear tree to the 12 drummers drumming at the book's end. In most cases, the art, like the song itself, is cumulative in its presentation, though a marvelously spare double-page spread illustrating "five gold rings" eschews the finely detailed, more-distant scenes to instead present a close-up view of hands holding those rings laid out on small cloth decorated in red, green, and blue. This visual pause evokes the slower pace of that line in the song, clearly demonstrating the thoughtfulness with which Hawthorne approached her illustration. Encore! (full lyrics, author's note, game) (Picture book. 2-12)

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