Celebrate! Connections Among Cultures

Review
By Bloomsbury Review

This outstanding photo-essay by award-winning author and photographer Jan Reynolds explores the ways the human family celebrates across the globe, revealing how traditions observed in cultures in seven far-off lands share many similarities with customs practiced here in the United States. Reynolds opens each double-page layout with a simple but powerful phrase ‘When we celebrate…’ in all-capital letters on the left-hand page, followed by the completion of the sentence across the top of the page on the right, as, for example, in the opening segment ‘When we celebrate… we gather together.’ Eating and drinking, decorating the body, playing music, dancing, and using fire are the other traditions featured in the book. The page headings are accompanied by gorgeous color photographs and fascinating descriptions of e celebratory rituals of the Sherpas, Tuareg, Aborigines, Sami, Yanomami, Inuit, Balinese, and Americans alike. Rarely has the subject pronoun ‘we’ been so beautifully inclusive.