The Twelve Days of Christmas: A Holiday Fantasy

PreS-Gr 1–Warm, exuberant art shines in Lockwood’s picture book rendition of the caroling classic, “The Twelve Days of Christmas.” As two bears in semi-Victorian finery celebrate Christmas, the gifts enumerated in each stanza of the carol appear, rendered sumptuously as objects and animals jostling for increasingly less space. The “partridge in a pear tree” is a glowing tree topper adorning a Christmas tree festooned with golden pears; “eight maids a-milking” are eight cats in aprons and bows hard at work; “ten pipers piping” show up as lions with jaunty top hats capering about with flutes; and so on. More and more guests come to join the merriment, crowding the words until readers reach a final, wordless page of dizzy festivity. The carol concludes with a cozy moment of domesticity. A “can you find?”–style list at the end entices readers to scour each illustration for fun details. But there’s no doubt this energetic interpretation of a well-loved carol is a feast to behold and will especially appeal to children who like hidden object books.