Nine Days to Christmas by Marie Hall Ets and Aurora Labastida.

“Early in the morning her mother and Maria filled cornhusks with sweet corn-flour pudding mixed with raisins and packed them into kettles to steam. Then they colored fruit juice with bright red flowers from the market. Ceci was helping them fill little toys with candy when her father called from the patio that he and Salvador were almost ready for the pinata. Her father was holding the ladder and Salvador was stretching ropes between two trees in the patio.

So Maria got the pinata and hung it between two chairs in the kitchen, and Ceci filled it all by herself. She put in big juicy oranges, and tiny sweet lemons, and peanuts, and candies wrapped in pretty papers, and red-and-white sugar canes. Then she went and watched while her father and Salvador tied the filled pinata to the rope in the patio and pulled it way up into the air.”

Marie Hall Ets, who won a Caldecott Award for her illustration in Nine Days to Christmas, was born on December 16, 1895. She also wrote and illustrated five books which were named Caldecott Honor books: In the Forest (1945), Mr. T.W. Anthony Woo (1952), Play With Me (1956), Mr. Penny’s Race Horse (1957), Just Me (1966). I think her best book, however, was one that did not win any recognition from the Caldecott committee: Gilberto and the Wind, published in 1963.

Ms. Ets was a social worker in Chicago, and in addition to the many picture books she wrote and illustrated, she also transcribed the autobiography of an Italian immigrant woman, Ines Cassettari. The two women met at the settlement house where Ms. Ets worked. The book was called Rosa: The Life of an Italian Immigrant, and it enjoyed great success when it was published in 1970. I would like to find a copy and read it because it sounds interesting.