TINY T. REX AND THE LITTLEST STAR

This Yuletide-flavored installment in the dino-centered series finds Tiny having trouble locating a spot for a Christmas star.

Oh, Tiny T. Rex: Is there no end to your sympathy-arousing predicaments? This time around, it’s Christmas Eve, and narrator Tiny, who has the wide-set eyes and flat-rectangle head of a Funko figure, is getting ready for the town’s Festival of Stars. Before the celebration begins, every tree needs to be topped with a star. But while out searching, star in hand, for a tree, Tiny keeps stopping to help the odd friend—by decorating, untangling lights, and so on—after which all the trees are taken. In a lament that would melt the heart of Ebenezer Scrooge, Tiny says, “I am sorry, little star. There is no place for you. I should not have waited so long! I should have been better at finding.” But before readers can get too teary-eyed, Tiny’s appreciative friends come up with a solution to the diminutive dino’s problem. Stutzman seems to have a bottomless reserve of compelling scenarios for his pint-size protagonist, and he deserves an extra candy cane for thinking up an original premise for a Christmas story. Fleck, likewise, keeps things fresh. His blocky, digitally colored pencil art has Tiny and friends ambling across winter-evening greens that become nighttime black, against which the colorfully snow-suited dino characters look quite decorative.

Another uplifting, character-building Tiny tale.