The Blue Table by Chris Raschka (review)

Minimal text treats a compact blue table as the center of a holiday as a family (“A child, a parent, and another parent”) gathers around it for breakfast. Then it’s cleared off to serve as a work surface, and food gathered from farm, garden, and store, ranging from a turkey to apple pie, is assembled there. Finally a leaf is added to the table to extend it, another family joins the first, they all enjoy the meal together, and they’re “thankful—around the blue table.” The streamlined approach to celebration is interesting, but story is slight and the metonym of the table is too inanimate to be engaging. Raschka’s fluid watercolors balance the dreamy with the homey in the overstuffed tiny table, and the deliberately manipulated perspectives, which flatten out the table while placing it against the stars as the evening rolls in, add mood as well as emphasis. However, it’s largely a series of static scenes, with humans only visible as hands in the final celebration, and there’s not enough concrete appeal in the food to compensate. Nonetheless, it’s a gentle early treatment of holiday gatherings, especially suitable for Thanksgiving, that might particularly grab the interest of children who focus on their physical surroundings.