Sawdust Carpets is actually about a little girl's involvement in a Spaniard tradition. This book is good to read to younger kids while teaching about multi-cultures and religion. The protagonist's family is Chinese but lives in Guatemala and can understand Spanish. This was an interesting thing because the reader gets insight into various cultures. The tradition is to use colored sawdust to create carpet like art in the streets so the procession can walk over it while carrying the statues of religious symbols. This can teach about the tradition, art, and the religious practice. There's also a page in the book that the mom talks to her sister about traditions from china and how they are similar, this could show children that some traditions are similar. The protagonist in this story is excited to make her own sawdust carpet but when the procession is about to walk over it she becomes upset. Someone tells her the importance of making the carpets and the destroying of them is to exemplify that life follows death and death follows life and I think it is a beautiful message. ( )

(multicultural, easy, fiction) The Lau family has been invited to spend Easter with their cousins in Antigua. Even though they are Chinese and Buddhist, they are looking forward to celebrating Easter. One of the traditions is to create a colored sawdust carpet for the Easter procession to march over, destroying many hours of hard work in the process. This is symbolic of the life and death of Christ, and of the life cycle itself, but our tiny heroine doesn't see it that way. Will she be able to accept the beauty of the tradition and create another sawdust blanket next year? This book supplies all the necessary elements of characters, plot, conflict, resolution, etc. I think children might find all the different cultural elements introduced in this story confusing. There are so many it can get hard to keep them straight. However, if you have the patience, this is an excellent example of mulitcultural book. A good segueway book to read prior to the introduction of many topics:chinese, buddhist, hispanic cultures, religious observances, religious tolerance, etc. ( )

A book about a young girl's effort to make and save a sawdust carpet. At one part of the book, the author describes how this carpet (which isnt a real carpet) is made. ( )