Review of “Cora's Christmas Challenge” by Sally Kashner, Illustrated by Remesh Ram

Score: 96/100 (9.6 out of 10)

Cora's Christmas Challenge is an absolutely phenomenal children's book by Sally Kashner! It features a fun, positive, and compelling plot with a relatable central character, Cora. It also features some adorable animal characters like the ubiquitous, wandering, and curious squirrel and the rabbit family in need of our protagonist's help.

This beautiful, adorable book follows the titular Cora, a bold, adventurous red-haired girl who appears to be around 5th or 6th grade, as she is challenged by her mother to go out, try new things, and meet new people on Christmas Eve.

Cora takes up this challenge with zest, zeal, and a little spice. She builds a snowman, goes sledding, has a snowball fight, and even meets up with some old and new friends like Oliver.

However, the highlight of Cora's day is when she and her friends discover a family of rabbits shivering and cold in the bushes. Cora and friends—who are good people, the kind of people you as the reader would want to get behind and root for—volunteer to build the poor rabbits a makeshift shelter out of branches, leaves, and a sheet. They also leave behind some carrots for them to eat.

It's a very touching and beautiful scene! One of our favorites of the year so far!

Above all, this book is brilliantly illustrated by the incomparable Ramesh Ram, the artist who previously wowed us in Baby Dragon's Big Sneeze written by Sheryl Bass. We didn't think that Ram could top his previous showing, yet here we are. Ram really outdid himself this time! Not only are the illustration colorful, vibrant, and textured like in Baby Dragon, they're actually superior in several ways. For example, there's a clear understanding of depth perception between the figures in the foreground and the background. This really helps to give characters and objects a three-dimensional look that pops off of the page!

Furthermore, the artist cleverly accomplished something that is actually very challenging to accomplish: they made everything in this book—characters, objects, and backgrounds—colorful and appealing without distracting from the central action. How did Ram accomplish this? Well, he was able to use contrasting colors and brightness to show emphasis. For example, the background might be as bright and colorful as the sunset or even the aurora borealis, yet the colors of the characters are brighter, bolder, and even more brilliant: bright pink, bright purple, bright orange, bright green, and bright red (in the case of rabbit shelter). It's this contrast that makes it easy for the characters and figures to stand out even in the midst of the impressive backgrounds.

Also impressive are the lighting effects against the windows and the subtle details like what the squirrel and other characters are doing in the background. Attention to detail is something that will always raise a book's grade in our eyes. Nothing ever seems stagnant or stale. Things are always moving. There's always action to be found somewhere. Every character is being more than a character, they're being a living, breathing entity find something to do and reasons to do it. For example, the squirrel doesn't just sit around and stare. No, the squirrel actually tries some of the activities that Cora is trying and even eats some of the food that the other characters leave behind (like the carrots). That clever, resourceful squirrel!

By the way, there's a whole epilogue section teaching kids about squirrels like the one in the book. How cool is that?!

Check it out on Amazon!