The inimitable Auntie Claus is back for another Kringle family lesson in the true meaning of Christmas in this successful sequel (Auntie Claus, 1999). This time Auntie Claus’s young nephew, Christopher, decides that he actually wants to be on the B-B-and-G list (that’s the bad boys and girls who won’t be getting any presents). Not only does Chris not believe that Auntie Claus is Santa’s older sister, he also is beginning to have doubts about Christmas altogether. Chris takes his own trip, with the help of Auntie Claus’s diamond key, on the mysterious glass elevator that shoots him straight to Santa’s magical kingdom. There Chris learns that he does indeed believe in Christmas, and that the key to believing is just as Auntie Claus said, “All the best things are invisible. . . . Sometimes you have to believe in order to see.” Primavera’s stylish illustrations in jewel tones are darkly lit with just the right sense of mysterious danger and theatrical suspense for this dramatic tale. Several illustrations recall the movie version of The Wizard of Oz : the tall-hatted guard at the enormous door who turns away the outsider on a quest, the army of strange henchmen, the huge disembodied head who rules a group of followers based on their misbeliefs, and a magical snow globe with Chris inside. In fact, the things that Chris learns at the North Pole—believing in yourself, appreciating your family, and the power of the invisible—are the same lessons Dorothy learned in Oz. “There’s no place like home,” and for anyone named Kringle, there’s no place quite like the North Pole. (Picture book. 5-8)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-15-202441-7
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Silver Whistle/Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2002
Stevenson (The Most Amazing Dinosaur, p. 640, etc.) returns to Mud Flat, there to measure the doings and take the eccentric pulse of that homey burg and its population of guileless animals. Here, nine quick, intertwined stories follow Vernon and Roy, Moira and Enid, Clem and Doak and others as they noodle about preparing for Christmas: gift gathering, getting ready for the party, keeping an eye skinned for Santa. Stevenson paints a world of artless magic in which the citizens are just oddfellow enough to keep things interesting, while also agents of unaffected good. They are the kind of folk to whom “strange and wonderful things happen on Christmas, like cookies in the snow,” and readers are only too happy for them. And late in the story, after the party has wound down and the animals have returned to their homes, when the sounds of chimes are distantly heard, it sends a shiver up readers’ spines, then a warm suffusion of bien-être, when it is learned that Freddie the fix-it goose has bedecked the tree next to the town pond with bottle caps and tin cans and nails and screws, all tinkling in the wind and glinting in the moonlight, before he headed south on Christmas Eve. (Fiction. 5-8)
Pub Date: Oct. 31, 2000
ISBN: 0-688-17301-2
Page Count: 48
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2000
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
This easy-to-read comic adventure yarn, for all its simplicity, has real narrative momentum and a pleasing mess of puns, while Schindler’s fine ink-and-watercolor illustrations lend the tale an even greater merriment. Sam, Rodeo Rosie, and their Wild West Show are headed home for Christmas. “Suddenly Sam put his hand to his ear. ‘Hark!’ he said. ‘The herald angels sing,’ the cowboys and cowgirls sang. ‘No! Shhh!’ Sam said. ‘I hear crying.’ Everyone listened. ‘That sound is sadder than a partridge without a pear tree,’ Rodeo Rosie sniffed.” Turns out that a train has been robbed of all its Christmas presents. While the Wild West Show stays behind to brighten the spirits of the travelers, Sam and Rodeo Rosie follow a trail of torn wrapping paper to the bad guys’ hideout. And it’s not just presents the outlaws have swiped but the Man in Red himself. Sam and Rodeo Rosie catch the robbers with the help of some wicked fruitcakes and some fancy lasso work with Christmas ribbon on Sam’s part. The villains are jailed, the presents returned, then Sam and Rodeo Rosie help Santa drop off a few gifts, with Sam being lowered by rope down chimneys from his hot-air balloon. Best of all here is Antle’s (Lost in the War, 1998, etc.) delight in language, humorously conveyed to readers, as pure an encouragement as can be to keep turning the pages and a good introduction to the pleasures of wordplay. (Easy reader. 6-8)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-8037-2199-4
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2000
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