Follow along as a little girl celebrates her very first Kwanzaa and learns about the traditions associated with the holiday. As each of the seven days goes by, she learns about the Seven Principles including the importance of unity, community, helping others, and family. On the very last day, it’s finally time for a celebration including music, dancing, and a feast of delicious African food.

The Bottom Line: A very basic introduction to the African-American cultural holiday, Kwanzaa, and the Seven Principles. Ideal for little ones in PreK – K and useful for teachers. Includes a note about Kwanzaa on the last page.

This review also appears at the Mini Book Bytes Book Review Blog. ( )

I thought this book was pretty good. It's not one of my favorites, but it's a good book. The story is about a young girl who celebrates her first Kwanzaa. It really focuses on the celebration part and what she does to celebrate it. It's all about celebrating Kwanzaa. One of the reasons why I liked this book was because of the pictures and colors. For example the front cover has so many different colors on it. It's a young African American girl who is standing with her candles, but it has different colors all over the front. The colors are what pulled me to read this book. There's also different designs in the book. On page two there are circles inside circles to add to the page. I just really liked the colors and designs on the pages throughout the book. I also really liked the language in the book. For example, when it talks about the first day of Kwanzaa it gives a word in the African language and then translates it to English. For example, "UMOJA" "Unity". Then it continues to go on throughout the book. I really liked that, because I not only was learning about Kwanzaa, but I'm learning a different language. This book was really cool, but it isn't something I want to read again. ( )

I felt that this book could be very enjoyable for young readers. I did like this book because I learned things that even as an older student have never learned before. I liked that this book was informational because the author used descriptive language and vocabulary words to help teach young kids about the holiday kwanzaa. The illustrations in the book were very colorful and truly enhanced the story. Most of the time the book was describing different objects and aspects of kwanzaa so the pictures really helped with visuals. I also really liked how the author had the phonic spelling new two words most readers would not know how to pronounce. This book really pushes the readers to learn about kwannza. The main idea of this book would be to teach readers about kwannza and the different sections/ the meaning of everything that takes place during kwannza.

My First Kwanzaa is an educational book. My First Kwanzaa is about a little girl explaining what Kwanzaa is and what her family does each day to celebrate. Kwanzaa is seven days long and each day has a different meaning to the African culture. The illustrations are very colorful and bold and I think that fits in very well with the traditional African culture. Whenever you see their traditional outfits they are always very colorful and stand out. A teacher could use this in the classroom to talk about different holidays celebrated around Christmas time. Many kids might not know that many people don’t celebrate Christmas but other holidays. Around the holiday time each day the teacher could teach about a different holiday. Read book; bring in traditional games and food. Talk about the different holiday and have the kids experience some of the traditions first hand. The kids may be more understanding of other holidays from other cultures if they can actually experience it and understand it better. ( )

Let’s learn about Kwanzaa! This book will be great for students who practice this holiday. Holidays aren’t talked about much in preschool but it is always good to have some books about the traditions children celebrate. This helps children to learn about other practices and celebrations. This book takes children through the Kwanzaa tradition and introduces many new vocabulary words while taking children on the 7 day traditions of this cultural practice.