There's No Place Like Home for the Holidays

Rating:
Summary: Excellent gift for the holidays!
Review: A compilation of poems, stories (and even recipes) related to the holidays--a great gift for grandparents or parents.

Rating:
Summary: A great holiday gift idea!
Review: This book is a light, entertaining hodgepodge of holiday poetry, short stories, recipes, and brief explosions of memory related by writers ranging from 3 to 93 years (members of the Papier Mache staff also contributed, no doubt lending a warm "family" feel to the project). Not necessarily limited to yarns of Christmas reunions, No Place covers Thanksgiving and Jewish High Holiday get-togethers--many humorous and predictably disasterous, other poignant and serious. SuzAnne C. Cole's "The One-Sweet-Potato Holiday" chronicle one couple's first holiday dinner in an empty nest, while another favorite of mine, "If Diamonds Grew on Orange Trees" by Pamela Ditchoff, reveals the labor of love behind a simple dessert made once a year (Ditchoff even provides the recipe).

The verse ranges from sing-song rhyme (Charlotte A. Cote's "Eternal Optimist", a saga of a whirlwind Christmas vacation, could have been a children's book) to clipped freestyle verse. Almost resembling a holiday family reunion, No Place has the look of being thrown together--frenetic, yet in the end very much appreciated. Buy one as a gift, or for yourself to read on the plane trip home.