An accomplished and widely anthologized poet of both children’s and adult verse, Nikki Grimes has received many accolades, including a Coretta Scott King Author Award, several Coretta Scott King Honors, and the 2022 Virginia Hamilton Lifetime Achievement Award. In this book, she turns her gift for poetry into a resplendent account of the caravan of animals bearing gifts for the newborn Christ child. Some you might expect — donkey, camel, ox, lamb — while others, from hippo to leopard to ostrich, add their own exotic idiosyncrasies.
To give you a taste, here's how she describes two of the creatures:
"Sparrow — as always, silent and shy —
skimmed the wind, a silk sash round her wee throat,
holding grains of mustard and saffron —
all a small bird could hope to tote.
"Tortoise, meanwhile, the Royal Prince of Slow,
trudged up from Tiberias
with a tambourine in tow."
The golden tambourine fits perfectly over tortoise's purple shell, like a crown. Here, as elsewhere in the story, illustrator Michelle Carlos has pulled out all the stops to make the pictures sumptuously festive.
Angels hover above the stable, waiting for the animals and their gifts, "each a picture of love." As each is presented to the holy family, the animals offer music with harp, shofar, tambourine, and zither. The angels follow with a lullaby that's printed, including the musical score, on the last page. Readers ages four to eight will find their sense of reverence awakened and deepened by this story and song.
