Kwanzaa Candles

December 1, 2022

K-Gr 1-This new series for beginning readers follows the traditions and ordinary daily routines in the lives of a diverse set of young children and their families. Diversity has improved in children's books across the board, but there's still a dearth of titles with brown faces at the forefront in the very earliest readers. These books do an excellent job of filling that bill. Short, simple sentence structure and repeated words make these perfect entry level books. Kwanzaa candles are explained in an age-appropriate way in less than 50 words. The making of roti is distilled into less than 10 sentences. An index and a "Did You See It?" section is included in the back matter. The illustrations are bright and clean, but flat and somewhat pedestrian in nature. While these titles have first-rate content for readers who are just starting out and center underrepresented cultures, it is difficult to justify the steep price when there are more affordable series doing the same thing. VERDICT Purchase where sturdy to fill a diversity hole in this part of collections and/or to have library binding instead of hardback for titles of this sort.-Jennifer Noonan

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