How to Decorate a Christmas Tree

Written by Vikki VanSickle

Illustrated by Miki Sato

Tundra Books

978-0-735268586

40 pp.

Ages 4-8

October 2023

 

We always decorate our tree about a week before Christmas so I'm right on target for my family for the reading of this book. But Vikki VanSickle and Miki Sato's picture book How to Decorate a Christmas Tree will resonate with anyone who has ever decorated a tree at Christmas, whether early or late, because of the familiarity of the task and the heart which is embedded in it.

From How to Decorate a Christmas Tree, written by Vikki VanSickle, illustrated by Miki Sato

We may all have our own way of preparing a Christmas tree for the holidays, but certain steps are always needed.  First, the tree must be gotten, whether from a forest, a store, or a storage area. This family waits until it's cold to pick up their tree but, depending on where you live, this might or might not be feasible. Inside, the tree is released from its bindings, placed in the cleared area, and the first sensory experience begins. Ah, that fresh scent!

From How to Decorate a Christmas Tree, written by Vikki VanSickle, illustrated by Miki Sato

With each new step, from unravelling the strings of lights, to retrieving the ornaments and placing them one at a time on the tree, the family must be cautious of the tabby cat that likes to get into things and under things. And as the family places each ornament on the tree, some handmade, some store-bought, there is a memory and an emotion that comes with it. It could be a memory of a time, or a place, or a person, or a feeling, but each ornament touches them as they place them gingerly and strategically upon the tree. And each story is told to a little one in a playpen too young for this year's endeavour but included just the same.

From How to Decorate a Christmas Tree, written by Vikki VanSickle, illustrated by Miki Sato

You could Google "how to decorate a Christmas tree" online and you would probably find hundreds if not thousands of sites to help. But, Vikki VanSickle, who has written everything from picture books to middle grade and young adult, whether humourous, realistic fiction, romance, or speculative fiction, doesn't make this a one-size-fits-all story. She's not telling you how you must decorate. Instead, she lets us glimpse in the window of one family as a little girl tells her baby brother everything that they do and why and what it means. She's sharing and making a Christmas for all to remember.

From How to Decorate a Christmas Tree, written by Vikki VanSickle, illustrated by Miki Sato

Illustrator Miki Sato's watercolour and cut-paper art gives the texture that makes How to Decorate a Christmas Tree something more special. Whether she makes the ornaments that appear tactile though in only two dimensions or gives us a popcorn strand so real that we can smell its popping in the air, Miki Sato brings us into that living room to open boxes, delicately handle fragile memories, and to enjoy the comfort of family.

Whether you decorate your Christmas tree with a cat in attendance or a dog, with popcorn or tinsel, with homemade ornaments or store-bought bling, your tree will be perfect because it's yours, created with love and memories of Christmases past and future, and always family, whether present or not. Merry Christmas!

 

From How to Decorate a Christmas Tree, written by Vikki VanSickle, illustrated by Miki Sato

While You Sleep

Written by Jennifer Maruno

Illustrated by Miki Sato

Pajama Press

978-1-77278-267-7

24 pp.

Ages 2-5

November 2022

 

My father used to say he was busy moving the clouds and polishing the stars when we were sleeping and now I know that he was telling me the truth. Seems a lot goes on when we sleep and, as the child in Jennifer Maruno's latest picture book might realize if she awoke in the night, there is a multitude of night-helpers whose tasks keep the world right.

From While You Sleep by Jennifer Maruno, illus. by Miki Sato

After a day of play, a child and her stuffies are put to bed by her mom and the cat. But, though she sleeps, there are many who are at work.

For while you sleep, there's work to be done.

Someone has to polish the sun,

Comb the grass, straighten the trees,

Place a dot on the black-eyed peas.

There is so much that goes into making the natural world wonderful: butterflies to be dusted, flowers painted, rainbows charged to keep their glow. And Jennifer Maruno tells us about all of them in the sweetest of rhyming couplets. In her dreams, the child envisions the endeavours of her own bunny stuffies sewing and weaving and creating, all to make the world she will love to be tidy and polished.

From While You Sleep by Jennifer Maruno, illus. by Miki Sato

The child may be sleeping with eyes closed but While You Sleep is a very contemplative story of seeing what could be happening in her dreams and in our natural world. It's opening eyes to the possibility of nightly magic to make our world lovely with flowers and plants, animals, and skies. Jennifer Maruno takes us into the dream world of this child to imagine and to build. It's about softness and security, wishes and hopes. It's imaging how things come to be and appreciating how they are. And, by telling her story through rhyme, Jennifer Maruno gives While You Sleep a dynamism of flow, making it a journey of childhood dreams of what might be.

Those wanderings through the natural world of her dreams are all essentially an adventure of time and space because of Miki Sato's textured collage art. Using paper, textiles and embroidery silk, Miki Sato makes the child's worlds, both her real and dream, touchable and deep both in dimension and spirit. There are elderflowers cut from lace and a Milky Way embroidered onto a midnight blue sky, and butterflies, flowers, clouds, stars and more. With deftness of cut and placement of shape, Miki Sato and her night-helpers make this child's world heavenly.

From While You Sleep by Jennifer Maruno, illus. by Miki Sato

I'm saving this book for a dear friend, envisioning her reading it to her future grandchildren. While You Sleep has the love and whimsy that I know she'll want to share with little ones, guiding them through the natural world she so appreciates and cultivates. Infused with sweetness and gratitude for a world of natural beauty, While You Sleep will be a great bedtime read and reminder that our world is one to cherish.

Windy Days

Written by Deborah Kerbel

Illustrated by Miki Sato

Pajama Press

978-1-77278-217-2

24 pp.

Ages 2-5

October 2021

 

When a picture book, a two-dimensional source, can evoke weather such that the reader feels the bite of the wind or the slash of the briskness of leaves against skin, it's doing something terrific. I may be able to feel the wind by just stepping outside right now but I'd much rather experience it through the text and paper collage of Deborah Kerbel and Miki Sato's latest collaboration.

From Windy Days by Deborah Kerbel, illus. by Miki Sato

In Pajama Press's Toddler Tough format of padded cover, rounded corners and thick pages, Windy Days explores children's experiences with the wind in the autumn, from fun fall fairs to Halloween outings. There are their encounters in the natural world with gentle breezes scattering milkweed seeds and tossing leaves, to creating energy with wind turbines and flying kites. Some of those winds are soft air movements while others are blasts of cold that practically toss little ones off their feet. Whatever their form, they're there, especially at this time of year, and reminding us of weather as our constant, bringing sound and movement and consequences.

Gusting wind: whoosh and whirl

Flags a-flutter, pinwheels twirl

From Windy Days by Deborah Kerbel, illus. by Miki Sato

Weather is always with us–regardless of those unique days when the weather people  announce that we'll be having some weather today!–and it impacts our choices in clothing, activity, emotions and experiences. It makes us cautious and impetuous, eager and subdued. Weather makes us who we are when we're outside. The winds of fall are no different, impacting our play and our learning. They affect our emotions: fear from branches tapping on a window during a storm; annoyance for biting our cheeks and noses; and delighting us with the dances of airborne leaves and seeds. And then delivering the first snowflakes of the next season.

From Windy Days by Deborah Kerbel, illus. by Miki Sato

I can't think of a better day to review Deborah Kerbel and Miki Sato's latest picture book collaboration than today, an incredible blustery day shortly after Halloween. Though little ones will be familiar with every scene depicted in the book, they will be especially aware of that Halloween scene as they sit inside their homes sorting their treats and listening to the winds outside. It's that familiarity of experiences that will endear Windy Days to our youngest readers. They know what it feels like to be inside listening to the wind against a window or outside bracing themselves as they trudge to daycare or school. They know what too little wind feels like but also too much. These are their experiences with wind. And Deborah Kerbel gives them the evocative words to go with those experiences. Roaring, whistling, howling give us the sounds but sweeping, biting, and tapping give us the movement. The wind is a living thing in Deborah Kerbel's words and an acquaintance that joins us for many of our fall days.

From Windy Days by Deborah Kerbel, illus. by Miki Sato

Because of the texture of her cut-paper collages and her judicious use of lines to portray movement, Miki Sato takes readers outside to enjoy and endure the winds of fall. By adding a third dimension in her illustrations and using bold vibrant colours, Miki Sato gives these familiar childhood scenes character, inviting us to reminisce about our own experiences with the wind. By making the wind as real as the costumed child losing her witch's hat or the girl with the umbrella almost sailing off her feet, Miki Sato makes the wind the star of Windy Days.

It's never too early to introduce children to STEM concepts like the weather–there is an activity page appended to the story–and now in the fall when warm breezes are transforming into brisk winds and biting blasts of air will soon to be the norm, Windy Days will help young children see themselves in the weather of their own lives and reflect on the nuances of the wind in its impact on them.

🌬🌬🌬🌬🌬

Take in the weather with all the books in this series, including upcoming Rainy Days in the spring of 2022.

Snow Days (2020)

Sunny Days (2021)

Windy Days (2021)

Rainy Days (coming in 2022)

Sunny Days

Written by Deborah Kerbel

Illustrated by Miki Sato

Pajama Press

978-1-77278-197-7

24 pp.

Ages 2-5

June 2021

 

On the heels of Snow Days (2020) and just before Windy Days (due out in October), Deborah Kerbel and Miki Sato take little ones out into the sunshine to enjoy the weather and to rhyme their way through with solar brilliance.

From Sunny Days by Deborah Kerbel, illus. by Miki Sato

From rubbing sleep from one's eyes to reading outdoors and planting seeds in the spring, children are escorted by the sun. Then with summer comes outdoor play in flower meadows, in the water and on a beach, and while taking sanctuary under an umbrella.

Prickly sun, burning heat

Cool shade and an icy treat

From Sunny Days by Deborah Kerbel, illus. by Miki Sato

As the sun gets lower in the sky, the crickets come out and the shadows grow long, and finally sleep comes for both child and our brightest star.

Evening sun, cricket song

Shadows stretching tall and long

From Sunny Days by Deborah Kerbel, illus. by Miki Sato

The rhymes may seem simple but there is a richness in Deborah Kerbel's take on what children experience in the sun. What's most important is what they feel, what they see, what they notice, and how it affects them. After all, Sunny Days is a book for our youngest children, connecting with them and their realities. There are the sensations of the blazing sun freckling the skin and the drying of mud. There is sunshine everywhere and anywhere, including an urban setting, a backyard, a beach or a park and Sunny Days shines on the lives of children's routines, joys and play. 

From Sunny Days by Deborah Kerbel, illus. by Miki Sato

I've always loved textured illustration and Miki Sato's paper collages are becoming a favourite, doing more than just following Deborah Kerbel's words. The artwork gives us crumbly soil in which seeds are dropped, cooling water lapping onto sandy shores, and angry clouds having left puddles for mud pies. The quality of Miki Sato's artwork infuses Sunny Days with more than just warmth and light; it also gives a sense of place and pursuit.

My recommendation for enjoying Sunny Days? Get yourself and your young charge on a blanket on the grass or the sand, or on a bench in a park or in yard. Let the child hold the book which is in Pajama Press's Toddler Tough hardcover format (padded cover, rounded corners and thick paper) and read it aloud, asking questions and even doing the fun and easy science experiments on the final page of the book. Then read it again on a rainy day to remember what sunny days are like.  I suspect your child will start learning the rhymes and reading along with you soon enough and you might even encourage a new curiosity with weather or the solar system. Who knows what Sunny Days may bring?

Snow Days

Written by Deborah Kerbel

Illustrated by Miki Sato

Pajama Press

978-1-77278-135-9

24 pp.

Ages 2-5

November 2020

In modest rhyming text and textured paper-collage artwork, Deborah Kerbel and Miki Sato invite young children and their families to join them outdoors to celebrate and explore the snow of winter.

From Snow Days by Deborah Kerbel, illus. by Miki Sato

First snow, surprise snow:

Nature's sparkly magic show

Deborah Kerbel begins her story with the delight of children taking in the first snow of the season. With arms upraised and mouths agape, perhaps to catch a few of Miki Sato's extraordinary snowflakes, the warmly-dressed children revel in the splendour of the snow. Of course, in Canada, there will be more snow days, and the next brings a little more that accumulates and allows for snow angels, both of the two-legged and four-legged varieties.

From Snow Days by Deborah Kerbel, illus. by Miki Sato

There's skating and watching snow fall from the warmth of inside, shovelling and building snowmen, sliding down banks and throwing snowballs. And always,  Deborah Kerbel shines some attention on the different kinds of snow. Whether it be powder snow or packing snow, blizzard snow or Christmas snow–a particularly special kind– or even frozen snow and slush and sleet, Deborah Kerbel invites little ones to savour each as a sensory experience of touch and feel.

From Snow Days by Deborah Kerbel, illus. by Miki Sato

But winter always comes to an end.

Last snow, tame and shy,

Winter's quiet wave goodbye

With the receding snow allowing snowdrops and the first crocuses to shoot, Deborah Kerbel lets us see the turnover to the next season, resplendent in its own emerging glories.

Miki Sato's three-dimensional illustrations, created with cut-paper collage, reflects Deborah Kerbel's textured text, making us feel the iciness of packed snow and the dampness of mittens, amidst the piles of different snows. Just as each snow day is different, Miki Sato's children and landscapes are as varied and diverse. Who interacts with the snow are a few adults but mostly children of all ages, colours, and abilities, including a young child with skates on the wrong feet and one with glasses. As for the snow itself, it blankets parklands and backyards, congests driveways and brings Christmas to dense housing divisions.

 

With our own snow days upon us, enjoy Deborah Kerbel and Miki Sato's exploration in words and art and even consider the handful of experiments for very young children suggested at the end. It may be a little cold and get a little wet but the adventure will be worth it.