Sunny Holiday

I love the title of this book and loved it even more when I dove into it. The language is creative and fun to read. I look forward to reading it aloud to my children. It isn't a long book but is 'just long enough'. I do hope there is a sequel. I would love to know the rest of the story, when her dad gets back home. Great job Coleen!

The month of December is chock-full of great holidays, and February brings Valentine's Day sweetness. But the time between January 1st and February 14th is mostly weeks and weeks of cold winter. Wouldn't it be the perfect place to institute a new and super fun kid-centered celebration? Nine-year-old Sunny thinks so, and so does her best friend Jazzy. Now that the excitement of December has passed, Sunny sets out to make January more magical and important. But what type of holiday should the new one be? What, for Sunny, is most important and most worth honoring? Sunny Holiday is the wise, kind-hearted and poetic heroine of Coleen Murtagh Paratore's latest chapter book, SUNNY HOLIDAY. Sunny lives in a run-down apartment complex in Riverton, New York. Her mother works as a housekeeper at a hotel during the day and takes evening college classes. Her father is finishing up a short prison term and will be home soon. Around her is urban decay, poverty and blight but also hope and unexpected beauty. Both Sunny's parents are artists --- her father is a visual artist who hides his work in a portfolio under the bed, and her mother is a singer and all-around creative force. They try to teach her to see beyond the usual and typical, and she is beginning to take their lessons to heart in a very real way. At first Sunny hopes her holiday will be filled with candy and fun, costumes and music. But, as she works on it, and as other events come together around her, her plans become more serious, more personal and more interesting. Soon she finds herself expressing the needs and desires of her family and her neighbors in a most surprising way, realizing that her voice and ideas can become catalysts for change. Paratore's prose is lyrical and lovely. Sunny's narration is a natural, urban poetry shaped by culture and imagination. The characters around her, especially the women, are dynamic and loving, even in less than ideal circumstances. Thus SUNNY HOLIDAY blends realism and whimsy for a story with a moral but lacks preachy, heavy-handed or annoying moralizing. Overall, this is a nicely written and thoughtful novel for young readers and grown-ups to share. --- Reviewed by Sarah Rachel Egelman

Sunny Holiday is a spunky little fourth grader. She may live on the "wrong side of the tracks" and get teased by the "bus girls," but she always looks at the bright side of everything. Her mother may work endless hours cleaning rooms at the hotel across the river, but Sunny keeps her chin up and carries on. Her father may have made a mistake that landed him in prison for the better part of another year, but Sunny puts a smile on her face and is thankful for the things in life that are free. Sunny and her friend, Jazzy, do just about everything together. They both have cats, and they love to create new games to play and projects to accomplish. Sunny's latest scheme is to create a holiday for every month. She explains to Jazzy that six of the twelve months have pretty cool holidays, but the other six are seriously lacking. January is her first goal. She's thinking something to celebrate on about the twentieth of the month would certainly help break things up until Valentine's Day arrives in February. This is a fun book for the elementary crowd. They will easily relate to Sunny's desire to have a kid-friendly holiday in every month, and her disappointment that the mayor's promise of a new park in her neighborhood turned into a half-dozen scraggly trees instead. The underlying theme of the need to pass the state's standarized test is an element of the story that might make it a worthwhile read-aloud for a fourth grade classroom. This one is a bit young for my students so I'm planning to pass it along to the fourth grade teachers in our elementary building. I'm sure Sunny will make another appearance someday if author Coleen Murtagh Paratore has anything to say about it. Reviewed by: Sally Kruger, aka "Readingjunky"