The Christmas Feast

by Nathalie Dargent, Magali Le Huche (Illustrator)

Overview

When Wolf, Weasel, and Fox steal a turkey for their Christmas feast, no one expects the meal to have her own ideas about the celebration. Don’t they want to fatten her up first? Haven’t they even hung up mistletoe or baked gingerbread? But the more time the three friends spend with Turkey, the less anyone wants the fun to end… 

Perfect for holiday story times, this festive book will provide plenty of laughs with its witty narration, amusing characters, and playful illustrations.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781467464482
Publisher:	Eerdmans, William B. Publishing Company
Publication date:	08/11/2020
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	32
File size:	41 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.
Age Range:	4 - 8 Years

About the Author

Nathalie Dargent is a children's author, screenwriter, illustrator, and blogger. Trained as an art historian, she started writing children's stories when her own children started learning to read. The Christmas Feast is her English-language debut. Nathalie lives in Paris. Visit her website at nathaliedargent.com.

Magali Le Huche is the illustrator of This is a Good Story (Simon & Schuster), All My Friends Are Fast Asleep (Farrar, Straus, Giroux), With Dad, It's Like That (Albert Whitman), and over 40 other books for children. She studied illustration in Strasbourg. Magali lives in Paris, where she often teaches art workshops for children.

Editorial Reviews

09/21/2020

In this droll spin on the prey-outwitting-predator premise, Fox snatches Turkey to be a Christmas feast for him and his burrowmates, Wolf and Weasel. The bossy bird immediately takes charge, insisting that they fatten her up before eating her (“Good grief, everybody knows that! Was this their first Christmas? Was this their first feast?” Dargent writes). Ashamed, the three friends meekly follow Turkey’s orders, and the quartet gets on splendidly until Christmas Eve, when she unnerves her new friends by slyly asking how they intend to cook her. “I would like to be flambéed,” she announces before giving her panicked friends an out, suggesting that they fatten her up until next Christmas, when the feast will be “even better.” Le Huche’s snappy pictures capture the brood’s lopsided dynamics with panache, right up to a final image: of Turkey reading The Best Recipes for Stuffed Wolves, Foxes, and Weasels. Ages 4–8. (Aug.)

Publishers Weekly

★ 2020-08-18
This turkey is no turkey.

When Fox absconds with a turkey for his Christmas feast with his wolf and weasel pals, he gets more than he bargained for. Although the turkey is alarmed when she’s snatched away from the farm, she’s more than pulled herself together by the next double-page spread. In this picture, Le Huche depicts her perched atop a chair in Fox’s disorderly home, berating him for the mess. By the time Wolf and Weasel arrive, everything is tidied up, and Turkey sets her sights on bossing them around, too. Appalled that they’d even consider turning her into pâté before fattening her up, Turkey sends the befuddled trio out to gather food. She then cooks up a delicious “frog and sprout stew” for dinner, further solidifying her unexpectedly empowered position in the household. By the time Christmas Eve rolls around, Turkey has fully incorporated herself into the group, and Wolf, Weasel, and Fox are dismayed when she asks them “how would they cook her?” True to the dry humor of this trickster tale, she continues, “‘I would like to be flambéed.” Needless to say, this does not come to pass, and Turkey instead cooks up a feast for the four of them. A sly twist offered in the cartoon art at the final page turn provides readers with a final treat to savor.

Deliciously funny. (Picture book. 4-8)

Kirkus Reviews