The Night the Lights Went Out on Christmas

by Ellis Paul

Overview

Based on acclaimed singer-songwriter Ellis Paul's Christmas song, this hilarious tale focuses on an inevitable part of the holiday season—lights! Year after year, the neighbors on one suburban street try to outdo one another with their holiday decorations, until one night their efforts take out the world's power grid. Once the neighborhood is dark, though, they're finally able to clearly see the stars above—a simple, perfect Christmas show. Includes free downloadable mp3.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781489653253
Publisher:	Av2 by Weigl
Publication date:	07/28/2016
Series:	Av2 Fiction Readalong 2017
Product dimensions:	11.00(w) x 8.60(h) x 0.30(d)
Lexile:	920L (what's this?)
Age Range:	4 - 7 Years

About the Author

Ellis Paul is a singer and songwriter whose style bridges pop and modern folk. In a career spanning more than twenty years, he has released eighteen albums, including The Day After Everything Changed. The first of his two children's albums, The Dragonfly Races, was one of NPR's top ten picks for 2008. His first children's book, published in 2014, is The Hero in You, based on his album of the same name. He grew up in northern Maine and is now based in Boston.

Scott Brundage is an award-winning illustrator whose works have appeared in major newspapers and magazines throughout the U.S. This is his first picture book for children. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and lazy dog.

Read an Excerpt

The Night the Lights Went Out on Christmas

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By Ellis Paul

ALBERT WHITMAN & Company

Copyright © 2015 Ellis Paul
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8075-4543-0

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CHAPTER 1

Every Christmas since 1960, the Johnsons have filled their yard with nifty blinking reindeer, Santas, dwarves, and stars.

It started kind of innocently, just lights within a tree.

Then the mailbox got all lit up, then the chimney, then the eaves.

Then the half-shell Mary was blinking neon blue. Then the hydrant, then the doghouse, then they built a petting zoo!

With electric livestock — llamas, horses, donkeys, camels, mules — and a life-sized baby Jesus, sparkling like a desert jewel!

Well, the lights so rattled the neighborhood that the Smiths planned a revolt led by a neon Santa Claus that buzzed and sparked a thousand jolts.

The Williams rolled out cotton snow.

The Wheelers pinched a grinch.

Mr. Greenberg lit a menorah with eight foot flames and did not flinch.

The Jacksons inflated snowmen inside their manger scene.

The three wise men all stood confused.

Snow in the desert? Is this a dream?

Well, things got so darned cluttered that every house along the street vanished beneath the twinkling junk, like pajamas beneath the sheets.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from The Night the Lights Went Out on Christmas by Ellis Paul. Copyright © 2015 Ellis Paul. Excerpted by permission of ALBERT WHITMAN & Company.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Editorial Reviews

09/14/2015
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. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

"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."—Kirkus Reviews

"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. New and old fans alike will pore over this one."—School Library Journal

From the Publisher

10/01/2015
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

School Library Journal

2015-08-12
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)

Kirkus Reviews