Bestselling author Tillman offers a dreamlike interpretation of the collective spirit that permeates the holiday. The first-person rhyming text shows the narrator (the author herself?) dozing off just as the personified Spirit enters the room. The following illustrations and text create a magical atmosphere, with a sleigh splashing through water, peppermints growing on trees and wolves howling a Christmas carol. A page representing peace shows a lion lying down with a lamb with a dove overhead, and another page shows a flock of sheep under the Christmas star with a textual reference to the baby of the season. This mysterious approach concludes with the narrator’s child viewing the Christmas tree, which to her is the best part of Christmas. The illustrations have an appealing, surrealistic quality, but the caliber of the text is uneven. (Picture book. 4-7)
