The Twelve Days of Christmas – Todd Lockwood
My dear friend, Todd Lockwood, has just published an illustrated Christmas book with Brown Books Publishing and it is available November 12th on Amazon!
I recommend you go to his Backerkit site – where you can get a SIGNED Special Edition!!!
Check out these trade reviews!
The SLJ review:
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.
VERDICT While an illustrated version of “The Twelve Days of Christmas” is nothing particularly innovative, Lockwood’s art is a riot of color and mayhem and, for the right readers, will be delicious to pore over.– Kate Stadt
The Kirkus Review:
Anthropomorphic animals seize the spotlight in this fun take on the familiar carol.
They’re all here: lords and ladies, pipers, drummers, maids, and so many fowls. The “true loves” are fluffy white bears dressed in Edwardian-style clothing, who exchange gifts in a very cozy parlor with a glowing fireplace. They hang golden pears on a pine tree topped with a partridge ornament; on the second day of Christmas, they smile over a live partridge in an ornate cage with the two turtle doves.
The third day features a music-box partridge in a golden pear tree, two more doves, and a trio of aproned French hens sweeping and dusting; sharp-eyed readers will observe a different partridge-and-pear-tree item on every subsequent page. The hens and turtle doves multiply and are joined by pelicans, ostriches, green parrots, swans, and more.
Mammals arrive for the festivities: One spread features feline milkmaids; another, raccoon milkers. Dogs, then pigs, then turtles, join the fray as drummers. Glowing with jade green and ruby red, Lockwood’s illustrations initially feel like vintage Christmas postcards. As more and more animals are added, the well-ordered setting becomes joyfully frenetic: One of the bears makes ice cream out of the abundant milk and eggs, supplementing the pastries prepared earlier.
A final page lists the gifts packed into these sumptuous pages of organized chaos—and many other hidden treasures are not listed.
Delightful discoveries await readers’ attention in this zany Yuletide offering. (Picture book. 4-8)
