The Night the Lights Went Out on Christmas

September 14, 2015
The Griswoldian escalation of holiday decorating among competitive neighbors has an unexpected ripple effect in this rhyming fable inspired by a song from Paul’s holiday album, City of Silver Dreams. After years of trying to outdo each other with lights and inflatable lawn ornaments, the residents of Christmas Block create a visible-from-outer-space display that draws carloads of people “driving at their leisure./ They’d gawk and squawk and stare in shock,/ while their children had near seizures.” A blown fuse causes a global blackout, but the resulting celestial light display may prove the best decoration of all. Brundage’s increasingly flashy and jam-packed scenes match the over-the-top silliness of Paul’s song, before creating a stark contrast in later pages awash in nature’s inky blackness and astral shimmer. A free download of Paul’s tune is available. Ages 4–7. Illustrator’s agency: Shannon Associates.

October 1, 2015

PreS-Gr 3-"It started out kind of innocently, /just lights within a tree./Then the mailbox got all lit up, /then the chimney, then the eaves." In this illustrated version of Paul's original Christmas song, one family's annually increasing holiday lawn decorations lead to a neighborhood competition that results in a light show so full of light-up Marys, giant menorahs, and massive inflatable snowmen that it can be seen from space and eventually triggers a worldwide power outage. In the darkness, the community realizes that the most beautiful light show is the one playing out in the stars above their heads. A download of the song is included with this title and is an important addition. Without Paul's folksy musical accompaniment, some of the lyrics' rhymes feel forced and inconsistent, but the detailed, digital illustrations of glowing electric lights and lawn tchotchkes pop off the page, and the message of remembering what's important about the season is presented without falling into sentimentality. VERDICT New and old fans alike will pore over this one.-Brooke Sheets, Los Angeles Public Library

Copyright 2015 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 1, 2015
Rhyming verse relates a sentimental tale about how everyone in a neighborhood learns to enjoy the quiet on a dark Christmas Eve after a power failure. One neighborhood in Medford Town is known as Christmas Block because all the houses are completely covered in lights and Christmas decorations. But one Christmas, when the lights are switched on, a blackout begins on Christmas Block and then spreads around the world. A little girl from Christmas Block points out the newly bright stars, which are then appreciated by all. The people remember: "See, all it took on Christmas night / to guide three kings was one star's light." The following year the people on Christmas Block light only one candle as their sole decoration. The text is based on Paul's song of the same name (available for download from the publisher's website). While it may work with a guitar accompaniment on a stage, as a picture-book text, the rhyme is seriously flawed and not up to basic standards of poetry. The rhyme scheme changes midway through the story, many lines do not have consistent rhythm, and all too many terminal rhymes are either forced or not-quite-rhymes-or both. Illustrations in deep jewel tones with glowing Christmas lights use a double-page-spread format that gives Christmas Block a solid visual presence with the excitement of the holiday in the air, but they cannot compensate for the text's inadequacies. The illustrations try to illuminate the story, but the substandard verse makes the lights go out on this effort. (Picture book. 4-7)

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