A Moose in a Maple Tree: The All-Canadian 12 Days of Christmas. Troy Townsin. Illustrated by Jennifer Harrington. Victoria, BC: Polyglot Publishing, 2008. 32 pp., pbk., $19.95. ISBN 978-0-9737748-6-3. Subject Headings: Twelve days of Christmas (English folk song)-Adaptations. Christmas-Juvenile fiction. Picture books for children. Kindergarten-grade-2 / Ages 5-7. Review by Ian Stewart. **** /4

excerpt:

On the twelfth day of Christmas
  a Canuck sent to me
     12 skiers skiing
     11 sled dogs mushing
     10 salmon leaping
     9 mounties riding
     8 lobsters nipping
     7 beavers building
     6 whales breaching
     5 hockey sticks
     4 totem poles
     3 snowmen
     2 polar bears
   AND
     A moose in a maple tree!

 

Troy Townsin and illustrator Jennifer Harrington have created an endearing Canadian adaptation of the ubiquitous Twelve Days of Christmas. There are profuse variations of the classic verses, and perhaps the Australian-born author recalled the Australian variation of the poem which begins:

On the 1st day of Christmas
my true love sent to me
a kookaburra in a gum tree.

 

      The illustrations of Canada's iconic symbols, mounties, beavers, totem poles and, of course, hockey sticks are colorful and delightful in their simplicity.

      Teachers will only be limited by their imaginations in how to incorporate the story into their early years' classrooms: to foster ideas about Canada and its symbols, as a template for creating the class's own multicultural version, beginning numeracy, art projects or school assemblies to name but a few.

Highly Recommended.

Ian Stewart is an early years literacy support teacher at David Livingstone School in Winnipeg, MB.

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