Review
Original Review Date: ~4/21/2008
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Title: Mrs. Muddle’s Holidays
Author: Laura F. Nielsen
Pictures: Thomas F. Yezerski
Publisher: Farrar Straus Giroux
Genre: Children’s Fiction, Ages 4 – 8
Year Published: 2008
Number of Pages: 32
Format(s) Available: Hardcover
ISBN: 13: 978-0374350949
ISBN: 10: 0374350949
Reviewed by Jonathan Langford
Review date: ~4/21/2008
Some books are written to help start conversations with your child. You know, the ones like “Why Mommy and Daddy got a divorce, and Daddy is living with a man we call Uncle Dan.” That sort of book.
Fortunately, the kinds of conversations Mrs. Muddle’s Holidays is likely to spark are considerably more benign than that. This fun little story will put a smile on your child’s face (and yours), while providing a nice opening for talking about what holidays are, the holidays you celebrate, and holidays celebrated by your child’s friends that are different than yours—and, perhaps, holidays you don’t celebrate now but might want to start celebrating. (Our seven-year-old was particularly keen on the one where the kids look for presents outside under piles of leaves. But then, he’s always up for anything that will result in more presents.)
The book starts with a listing of some of the many holidays celebrated in Katie’s neighborhood: Valentine’s Day, Halloween, Ramadan, Rosh Hashanah, Arbor Day, Pioneer Day (the only explicitly Mormon reference in the book, though the author is LDS), and more. But then Mrs. Muddle moves into the neighborhood, and the local children and adults learn about many new holidays they had never known about before: holidays celebrating the first robin of spring and the first shower of April, Earthworm Appreciation Day, and others.
You can pretty much guess the rest of the plot from there, especially if you’re unsporting enough to take a glance at the title. Eventually, the neighbor kids decide it would be nice to catch Mrs. Muddle by surprise with a holiday she doesn’t know about—which naturally turns out to be Mrs. Muddle Day, in her honor.
This is a fun, well-done, angst-free picture book, with engaging illustrations. My 7-year-old son giggled much of the way through: a pretty strong endorsement, considering the target audience. I forgot to time it, but to the best of our recollection, we think it took about 10 minutes to read—largely because Michael read much of the text himself.
This brings up an important point. Given the variety of challenging vocabulary in this book (considering the target age range), it’s not a book that your child will be able to read on his/her own. Fortunately, it’s fun enough that you won’t reading it out loud. There’s also a page at the end (in smaller type) describing what holidays are, including origins and significance of some of the less common holidays mentioned in the book. It’s an ideal resource for parents or teachers; indeed, I suspect the target audience for this book consists largely of K-2 teachers who might want to use it as part of a unit on holidays.
You won’t find it mentioned on the back-cover blurb, but back about a dozen years ago Laura Nielsen had another, equally delightful picture book titled Jeremy’s Muffler that was published by Atheneum. Sadly, that one (also reviewed by me for AML-List) is out of print now. I hope it won’t be as long before we get to see her next offering.