A great reference for anyone who wants to add some depth to any holiday topic they are doing. Plus there are some celebrations that most of us don't even know about. The information is presented in informative and understandable style for older children to adults. I've used a few of the topics as additional information for some of my holiday cartoons on my website. One thing I thought a bit odd, it did not include Mardi Gras. Hmm? :)

This new edition of Sue Ellen Thompson's Holiday Symbols informatively surveys over 900 symbols associated with over 200 holidays around the world, providing an important reference to the origins, customs, traditions and histories of each and explaining the basics of each holiday.

The Franconia, New Hampshire, farm of the American poet Robert Frost was turned into a museum and center for poetry and the arts in 1976. From that time, "The Frost Place" has been annual event wherein an emerging poet has been invited to spend the summer living in the house where Frost once lived and wrote some of his greatest poetry. The Breath Of Parted Lips: Voices From The Robert Frost Place, Volume One is a remarkable anthology of twenty-four poets, each of whom won that honor of a summer's residency and document the success of the original concept as a means of generating outstanding poetry while nurturing the poet's muse in the rooms and views that were once the inspiration of the great Robert Frost. Poem At 40: Windwashed--as if standing next to the highway,/a truck long as the century sweeping by,/all things at last bent in the same direction./An opening, as if all/the clothes my ancestors ever wore/dry on lines in my body:/wind-whipped, parallel with the ground,/some sleeves sharing a single clothespin/so that they seem to clasp hands,/seem to hold on.//And now that I can see/up the old women's dresses,/there's nothing but a filtered light./And now that their men's smoky breath/has traversed the earth,/it has nothing to do with them./And now that awkward, fat tears of rain/slap the window screen,/now that I'm naked too,/cupping my genitals, tracing with a pencil/the blue vein between my collar bone and breast,/I'll go to sleep when I'm told.

Anyone who has raised a difficult teenage daughter will relate to Sue Ellen Thompson's third collection of poetry, The Leaving. Most of the poems are dedicated to that subject. From packing a suitcase to visiting a college to decorating a Christmas tree Ms. Thompson allows us to eavesdrop on these personal and painful encounters. She does it beautifully. Her images are vivid, leaving no doubt as to what she wants us to understand. The book also includes selected poems from her two previous books, This Body of Silk and The Wedding Boat. "The Compliment" and "Remembering My Parents' Sex Life" are a couple of favorites. Even if you're not "into" poetry it's easy to appreciate the beauty of Ms. Thompson's words.

Sue Ellen Thompson's poetry is elegant yet accessible. She uses rhyme and fixed stanzaic patterns in a subtle and graceful way, but the real interest of her poems lies in the characters she creates: the teenage daughter, the distant husband, the aging parents, the old loves and lovers.... This poet has a restrained passion that I find very moving.