Celebrations Of Light : A Year of Holidays Around the World

by Nancy Luenn, Mark Bender (Illustrator)

Long ago, people found a way to light the darkness. They built fires to keep warm and cook their food. They lit torches to drive away danger. To help them see at night, they learned to make candles and lanterns. Light was so important in their lives that they came to use it in worship and in celebrations.

From a Brazilian New Year's celebration to the African-American holiday of Kwanzaa, Celebrations of Light circles the year and the globe. The text and paintings highlight twelve festivals, showing the diverse ways in which people around the world use light as a major part of their celebrations. In each of these holidays, light plays a significant role, marking and brightening special days.

Genres: Childrens, Holiday, Picture Books

32 pages, Hardcover

First published October 1, 1998

Reviews

[Cheryl]

Almost entirely Northern Hemisphere. Text very superficial, almost disrespectful in all that it leaves out; raises many questions for further research, reads like one of the dumb educational books that I grew up on half a century ago. Art is creative & sophisticated, though... it won't be to everyone's taste and I'm surprised that I like it, but actually I'm pretty darn impressed.

[CanadianReader]

This attractive book provides brief descriptions of 12 festivals of light from around the world. Full page paintings accompany each summary, providing an impressionistic image of each festival. I would have much preferred actual photographic images. I think these would have been more meaningful to the school-age children to whom this book is targeted. This is not an essential purchase and I think there are far better books out there. Its value lies in its pointing out that though cultures differ almost all peoples have special times in which they celebrate "the light".

[AnandaTashie]

I love the concept: a book dedicated to festivals that center around light. The book itself is reasonably matter-of-fact. It's not encyclopedia writing, but it's far from poetic or especially beautiful. Still, very interesting and inspiring.

Some I especially want to remember:

Dec & Jan - Brazil - Iemanja (African goddess of waters) - candles in sand, white flowers in water.

January - Sierra Leone - end of Ramadan, lanterns as huge floats.

November - Thailand - Me Khongkha (mother of waters) - bowls in the shape of lotus blossoms from paper or banana leaves, incense, flowers, lighted candles inside and set afloat.

[Elizabeth]

I'm not sure how much I like the illustration style, but I particularly liked how many people are dark-skinned, after finding the characters in Diwali: A Cultural Adventure surprisingly light-skinned on the whole.

I'm not sure exactly who the target audience of this book is. The holiday descriptions don't feel over-simplified, but it is essentially a fleshed-out list of holidays, so it's not a book you can read to a child in a narrative fashion.

[Gato Negro]

This is a wonderful book for adults and children alike. I loved the holidays which were highlighted...and would love to see even more included. The beginning of the book included an author's note which stated that the author left out All Saints, All Souls, the Hungry Ghost Festival, Prachum Ben and Tet. She seemed to indicate that All Saints and All Souls day are proprietary to Europe when they are celebrated by Catholics in the US as well.

[Kristin King]

I liked the idea of holidays around the world, but for a book about light celebrations this one made me feel kind of down. Maybe I read it on an off day. Wouldn't make my children finish it though. Still, it is informative and covers many different countries: Brazil, China & Taiwan, Sierra Leone, Luxembourg, Korea, Japan, India, Thialand, Israel, Sweden, USA & Mexico, USA (Kwanza).

[KaitandMaddie]

Well, we totally forgot about this book at some point in Feb/March, so we just read the entire thing. A couple of new days for all of us (I want coffee in bed from now on!)

2025 - hopefully we will read this monthly this time around!

[Christina]

This book presents all different festivals of a few different cultures to the students. It is good to incorporate diversity into the classroom in a number of ways.

[Tina Sheng]

The book, “Celebrations of Light: A Year of Holidays Around the World”, is a realistic fiction book. It tells the tale of twelve different countries and how light is represented in each of the country’s cultural celebrations. This book doesn’t specify any specific discriminations on different cultural celebrations of light when reading the book, and it includes equal coverage of many country’s cultural celebrations of light. It gives children more knowledge about other country’s cultural holidays. I liked this book because it gives some background information about the celebration of light from each of the countries, and each page of images shows the importance of light for that cultural group. It is a good book to read to young children because it makes them want to learn the importance of each of the cultural symbols of light in each of the countries. It also helps encourage them to want to read more about the twelve different country's cultural celebrations.