Review Detail

THE GIFT OF WORDS is a lovely holiday picture book. Jerome is looking for the perfect words to capture the holidays, but he is unable to find the right ones. He soon has an idea and creates a tree for people to add their favorite positive words. Together, they create something beautiful.

What I loved: This is a lovely nonspecific holiday read about the power of words and language to bring people together and evoke emotions. While he encounters words at stores about sales and purchases and he finds words from the news, these are not really what the season is about. Instead, he and his community create something more positive and lovely together. These themes are clear and powerful with great messages for young readers.

This would be a great pick for a classroom or group setting where children can help to pick their own positive words to add to a group collection, recreating the tree. This also creates some thoughtfulness about the words can make us and others feel with a note of care. The illustrations are lovely and colorful with plenty of great things to examine on each page.

While the holiday is nonspecific, there are only a few Christmas-related images, limited to what is on the cover of the book (sleigh with bags). As such, it could work in nonspecific holiday settings well.

Final verdict: THE GIFT OF WORDS is a lovely picture book about the power of words with a holiday touch.