Mama Had to Work on Christmas - Hardcover

Marsden, Carolyn

4.11

18 ratings by Goodreads

9780670036356: Mama Had to Work on Christmas

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0670036358 ISBN 13: 9780670036356

Publisher: Viking Juvenile, 2003

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Gloria's Christmas begins with frustration when she is forced to go to work with Mama, but by the end of the day, she appreciates her family and enjoys the holiday.

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About the Author:

Carolyn Marsden is the author of The Gold Threaded Dress (Candlewick).

From Booklist:

Gr. 2-5. Gloria hates it when she has to go with her mother to work on Christmas Day in the fancy hotel where Mama has a job cleaning the bathrooms. At first Gloria is dazzled by the hotel luxury, but she's warned not to touch the buffet feast, and she's ashamed when a rich kid pities her as a "have-not." She's still upset after work when she and Mama join Nana in her rough cardboard house, which has no electricity, just over the border in Mexico. But, as they celebrate Feliz Navidad together, and Gloria opens her wonderful gift from Papa (who's a "migrant," away working in the fields on the holiday), she realizes that the love in her family makes her rich. The neat uplifting story doesn't have the wrenching beauty of Francisco Jimenez's autobiographical The Circuit: Stories from the Life of a Migrant Child (1997), which is for older readers, but this small chapter-book with moving, realistic black-and-white illustrations does bring home the painful truth about class differences, a subject seldom addressed in children's books. Hazel Rochman
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