Harvest Days: Giving thanks around the world by Kate DePalma, illustrated by Martina Peluso

I've been slowly overhauling the "Thanksgiving" books for several years now. While my personal preference would be to remove all the biased and fictional historical narratives and the ridiculous turkey books (Seriously, they make no sense! Encourage all the kids to read books about turkeys escaping and make turkey crafts and then... go eat turkeys?) I have to be realistic about what my patrons want. I've weeded the most egregious historical narratives and moved the others to the picture book section for historical fiction. I've kept the silly turkey books, and added to them when the occasion arises, because my own personal feelings aren't relevant. I've purchased accurate histories which have been shelved in the juvenile nonfiction, where I hope they will encourage readers to have a complete, contextual view of this time period, and I have focused on purchasing general gratitude picture books and a more diverse array of harvest festivals and celebrations.

Which leads to this new title from Barefoot Books, which explores harvest festivals around the world. Rhyming couplets, with pronunciation guides included as notes, present a number of harvest festivals with an inset giving a few more sentences of detail. The festivals include a North American style Thanksgiving in Liberia, Saint's Day in Germany, Sukkot in Morocco, and more in India, Iran, South Korea, Barbados, and other places. Back matter adds extensive explanations of the history of each festival while an author's note explains how harvest festivals have changed over the years, acknowledges the people from the different cultures who reviewed the book for accuracy, and an illustrator's note encourages readers to research other cultures, as she did to make the pictures.

The art shows a diverse array of people, both in traditional dress and in modern clothing, celebrating with food, music, dancing, and parades. Unique to Barefoot Books, the diversity also includes visible disabilities, including an apparently blind man with a cane, an amputee, and a person in a wheelchair. Peluso's art style has a generally primitive, static look, so there are no unrealistically thin people, but there is somewhat of a variety of body types with children generally looking naturally sturdy and rounded.

While this is short enough to be a storytime read-aloud, I am a little doubtful about toddlers or preschoolers in a library storytime setting getting very much out of it. I think it would be better suited to a school setting, where there's more time and a guiding adult to help the kids explore the idea of different celebrations. This would be very dependent on your audience of course - if kids have personally experienced these festivals, they'd pick up on them much more quickly, but I don't live in a very diverse area as far as culture goes. However, I think this would be an excellent choice for our four year old kindergartens when they explore fall festivals and holidays and I will be interested to see how it circulates in our general collection.

Verdict: A strong purchase for any library, even if you don't use it in storytime, this is a great presentation on different harvest festivals and will hopefully lead adults, if not children, to think a little more broadly about traditions. Recommended.

ISBN: 9781646866274; Published September 2022 by Barefoot Books; Paperback provided by publisher; Hardcover purchased for the library collection