Oona, abandoned as a baby, grows into “the prettiest and gentlest-mannered lass in the county,” but no one wants a tinker’s child. She goes from cabin to cabin as she ages, taking care of its residents as long as they need her, till finally the fairies build her a wee cabin of her own one Christmas Eve during the Famine, to which Oona welcomes the needy on white Christmases thereafter. Hodges’s retelling of Ruth Sawyer’s 1941 story, “The Wee Christmas Cabin of Carn-a-Ween,” shortens the original significantly and edits out much of the cruelty directed at the “tinker’s child,” but it loses much of its Irish musicality and emotional heft thereby. While this adaptation’s nice enough, it’s worth waiting till the kids are older and introducing them to the original, perhaps with Max Grafe’s 2005 illustrated edition. (Picture book. 4-8)
