Clatter Bash!: A Day of the Dead Celebration

A simple, rhythmic text, consisting mostly of sound words, is paired with eye-catching mixed media illustrations in this picture-book celebration of the Day of the Dead, the Mexican and Latin American holiday honoring the memory of deceased loved ones. After an initial scene in which people decorate the cemetery, a group of skeletons come out and have their own fiesta, rattling and rolling through a good time. The book concludes with an afterword giving more information about Día de los muertos...

Most of the story in Clatter Bash!: A Day of the Dead Celebration is told through author/artist Richard Keep's striking illustrations, as the text itself is quite minimal. The book begins "Knock-knock! Shhh! Huh? / Rattle-rattle Que? / show more Creak-crack Up we go! / Big fiesta! Yay!", while the accompanying artwork shows skeletons emerging from their graves and doing plenty of things not described in the text. This will probably work best for younger children, who will enjoy the simple, rhyming text, and the bold artwork, although I don't know that it makes the best introduction to the holiday, unless the adult reader can fill in the information about what is going on, and why. For children already familiar with the holiday however, this will offer (as the title suggests) a fun celebration. show less

The illustrations are bold, colorful, fun and, even though they are skeletons, cheerful too. A lot of the words are sounds like ‘honk-whiz’ and ‘whoosh-sploosh’ that make it fun to read. And the addition of the Spanish words is nice too. There is a very good explanation of the Day of the Dead holiday that tells you why and how it is celebrated that is easily understandable to all ages. It is a fun and informative book.

In my opinion, this is a good book. One reason I liked this book was because of the language. The majority of the book is all onomatopoeia. This makes it fun for the children to read. However, I think that it can get a little boring and repetitive after a while. Another reason i liked this books is because of the illustrations. The illustrations of the actions of the skeletons went really well with the words on the page. The author doesn't really tell you directly what Dia de los Muertos until you get to the end of the book where there is two pages giving all the information on the day. While I know that the big idea of the story is Dia de los Muertos and learning about the holiday, I'm not sure if this is the best book to teach about show more the holiday though because you don't really learn anything until the end and it doesn't have a lot of information due t it being condensed into only two pages. show less

This was the most simple book I read--aimed at the younger side of elementary readers. I greatly enjoyed the traditional art, which draws heavily on Day of the Dead history and style. Kids will find it very fun to read, as it rhymes as you follow the celebration. It would be a great read aloud book, as it requires a very interactive sort of audience, even though there are words in Spanish. The message isn't there, outside of simply giving the briefest of overviews of the holiday, but that works nicely with the style of book.

In my opinion, this is a great book to introduce to young readers who do not know what Cinco de Mayo consists of. The characters that are used are not believable but hilarious and amusing. Richard keep decided to write and illustrate the story in the perspective of the dead. The skeletons are the one who are celebrating in the book and this specifically helps the reader understand what happens. The perspective of the story changes a potentially “creepy” holiday, to a day of fun and appreciation. I liked how the book did not use too many words because the illustrations told it all. The acrylic, bright paint enhances the mood of the story by portraying The Day of the Dead as a pleasant holiday. The purpose of this story was to portray show more Cinco de Mayo as an enjoyable holiday. show less

This is a cute little picture book about the Mexican Day of the dead celebration. The theme of this book was just to show the overall fun the holiday brings. The book was mainly illustration driven as there was not much written word in it. The words that are there are in simple rhymes about the party the skeletons are having. As a result, what little story there was, was told through the pictures. While it was a simple story, you could still tell that the spirits came out to have fun during the night, but when the sun came out they had to go back to "sleep" and I liked how you could follow that just through the illustrations.

This book was kind of confusing, it mainly repeated the same word over and over again, but I really liked the concept of the book. The meaning of the book is to tell about the Hispanic holiday known as the Day of the Dead. There were a few good things about the book. One good thing was the last page of the book the author talked about the history of Day of the Dead and gave a description of what the celebration is and how it is celebrated. The illustrations told more of a story than the words did and I thought was different but cool. All of the illustrations showed movement. The pictures depicted what happens on Day of the Dead, in the beginning of the book it was pictures of the skeletons leaving their coffins. The ending pictures were show more of the skeletons getting back into their coffins. show less