Children's Book Reviews: 10/26/2009

Rueda's (Let's Play in the Forest) warm and fuzzy text offers an unexpected contrast to her cool Arctic spreads, suffused with a subtle feeling of wintry magic. “Am I a polar bear?” a cub fresh from its den asks its mother, who leads the cub through unremitting expanses of Arctic snow, water and ice. They are ghostly white shapes against pale pastel backgrounds, silhouettes without fur or modeling; only their outlines and some minimal shadowing distinguish them from the snow. A line or two per page slows the story to a gentle stroll. “Yes, little one,” the mother answers. “You can walk on snow and melting ice, just like a polar bear. You smell seals from far away.” When the cub is uncertain (“But I slip on melting ice, I can't catch a seal”) its mother reassures: “Don't worry, little one, I will stay with you, and I will teach you what polar bears need to know.” At the end of their journey, the mother polar bear curls herself around her baby, offering protection and security. A comforting bedtime story for youngest readers. Up to age 3. (Oct.)

Schoolchildren imagine themselves as chimps, whales and butterflies in this fantasy. The layout builds suspense, with ellipses preceding each page turn: “If I could have a spiky spine/ I'd get to be a.../ porcupine!” thinks a girl as she brushes her unruly hair and then, in animal form, has luxurious spines combed by a patient bunny. The children's choices sometimes improve their lives, as when a nerdy boy walks past two teasing kids: “For just one day, if I could dare,/ I'd be a growling grizzly.../ bear! I'd give my brother quite a scare,/ if I could be a grizzly bear.” (As a bear, he cups the bullies—who have turned into mice—in his paw.) Evoking 1970s illustration, Boutavant's (All Kinds of Families!) eccentric digital art features lithographs' grainy textures, fine lines and saturated colors; his doe-eyed, bobble-headed characters resemble the kids from the “Love Is...” comic. Leuck (I Love My Pirate Papa) crafts bubbly if predictable verse; a mirror on the final page helps salvage a wordy conclusion about preferring “to be/ that special someone, that is.../ me!” Up to age 4. (Oct.)

No ordinary abecedarian, this typographical trip will wow design fans and suggest creative projects with letterforms. The book's introduction speaks affectionately of typefaces—“just like people, they look different and have different personalities”—before embarking on a thrilling spin through the alphabet. The first spread presents an alligator's silhouette, made up of capital and lowercase As, as the repeated word “algae” forms green strands around it. A bat shaped from gothic Bs holds vampire connotations; tall, skinny Gs evoke the height of a giraffe that hides behind leafy, vertical folds; and breathless italic Rs make a rabbit seem poised to leap. Werner and Forss, a debuting team of graphic designers, devote page borders to extra wordplay: a C becomes the curved back and tail of a cat, a K's extended foot kicks a soccer ball, a cursive L is a lasso and rounded Ps nestle in a pod. Innovations arrive several to a page, rewarding repeat visits and encouraging readers to muse on the power of type and all that letters and words can imply or insinuate. Ages 4–8. (Oct.)

The eponymous hero is a clever, courageous monkey who makes lemonade out of lemons (or the banana equivalent thereof) when he is marooned on a desert island. Archie quickly makes friends with his fellow animal inhabitants and then rallies them to fend off an invasion by a “rough and smelly” band of pirates, whose idea of cruel taunting is to stick out their tongues and grunt “HAR,” after capturing Archie's friend Beatrice, a tiger. With a retro design aesthetic and swashbuckling sense of adventure, Rosenthal (Phooey!) showcases a gift for knowing how to pace action—he lets readers savor the details of Archie's settling in, then hits the visual accelerator when the baddies appear. His text feels too literal at times, especially give the crispness and detail of his drawings—it can feel like he's giving directions rather than telling a story. But mostly he's great fun to read aloud (“Tons of rotten, squishy, smelly mangoes, kiwis, papayas, and bananas... rain down on the confused pirates”), his snappy, breathless style carrying just enough of a wink to flatter readers' nascent sense of irony. Ages 4–8. (Oct.)

Popular kids' musician Covert (Ralph's World Rocks!) adapts another of his catchy songs in this outing about kids longing for a pet. Two children enthusiastically list the plethora of critters that would make great animal friends—“A gecko and a goose and a humpback whale”—interspersed with the attendant pleas (“Oh, please, pretty please, from the bottom of my heart to the top of my head”) and promises (“I'll be really, really good and you know I would feed 'em all day and at night I'd tuck 'em all in their beds”) one would expect. A jaunty rhyme scheme and fun wordplay (“Ocelots and lots of sloths and fleas”) keep the story bouncing, while the typography's size and color play up the pleading. Keller (The Scrambled States of America) depicts a zany menagerie in kinetic mixed media artwork that's bursting with fun details; keen-eyed readers will spot photos of Covert's face playfully worked into each spread. Keller seamlessly extends the text to create a true family dynamic, as Mom and Dad adamantly protest “Noooooo” early on, but relent in the end. Ages 4–8. (Oct.)

This comedic adventure by Beck (Buttercup's Lovely Day) stars a “pedigreed pooch” who is preparing for the poodle championships. Pierre's training includes sessions on the treadmill, show-dog classes and visits to the pet parlor, but he would rather be running around and playing outside with the other dogs. At the championships, Pierre slips out an open door and “followed his nose to the nearest park.” Though he has fun getting down and dirty with his new pals—chasing squirrels and rolling in “anything he pleased”—he misses Miss Murphy, his beloved owner, and finally makes his way back to her. Kids will get a kick out of Miss Murphy's poodlesque tresses as well as Pierre's transformation into “a glorious mess” during his time on the streets, which Beck depicts in copious detail in both text and art: “He was covered in garbage—chocolate syrup, chewing gum, fish guts and fries, bottle caps, bits of paper, spaghetti and cheese...” (the list goes on). Beck trots out a time-tested theme—there is indeed no place like home—and executes it with pizzazz. Ages 4–8. (Oct.)

Newbery Honor–winning author Audrey Couloumbis (Getting Near to Baby) collaborates with her husband, Akila, to tell a story inspired by his family history in Greece during WWII. Twelve-year-old Petros and his older brother, Zola, live in the small town of Amphissa. Their rural life is interrupted when Nazis invade and a German commander takes up residence in their home. The family fears that their ties to America (the boys' father ran a store there, but they returned to Greece when it went bankrupt) will make them a target, and they hide all signs (such as American toys and clothing) that they are anything but an ordinary Greek family. Inspired by the courage of their cousin Lambros, a soldier who has escaped capture, Petros finds his own ways to contribute, including helping drop notes to spread war news; he also has an uneasy relationship with the German commander, who is something of a supportive presence but still the enemy. The Couloumbises craft a poignant and plainspoken account of the everyday impacts of a vast war and the importance of small victories. Ages 8–12. (Oct.)

Stringer debuts with an adventurous, darkly humorous ghost story. Twelve-year-old Belladonna Johnson lives an ordinary life, except for the fact that she can see ghosts, including those of her parents, who were killed in a car accident. Other than that, they're still her same old parents (“Mr. and Mrs. Johnson were great believers in the family dinner and just because they were no longer corporeal, they saw no reason to let things slide”). That is, until they disappear, along with all the other ghosts Belladonna has gotten to know. After enlisting her classmate Steve as a sidekick, Belladonna journeys to the Land of the Dead in order to bring back the ghosts; she eventually comes to realize that the fate of the universe is at stake and it's up to her to restore the natural equilibrium of the world. Though Belladonna at times seems like just another generic heroine, Stringer's ability to build a strong sense of mystery, entwined with Western mythology, will pull readers through to the end. Those who like unusual ghost stories without the usual horror will enjoy this book. Ages 8–12. (Oct.)

Townley's (The Red Thread) overly complicated fantasy stars 13-year-old Hap Barlo, a smart, nimble-fingered cobbler's apprentice who is also an unwilling thief. The slippery story line is founded on a mysterious bejeweled blue shoe in a cobbler's window in the town of Aplanap, but the action soon begins to alternate between Aplanap and a prison in a faraway mine, where the prisoners (in a plot element reminiscent of Holes) daily dig deeper toward some unknown purpose. The enormous cast of characters includes a pompous mayor and his greedy wife, a good-hearted cobbler and his hungry dog, an evil prison warden, a feisty, fearless girl with a crush on Hap, and numerous, hard-to-distinguish Aukis, a blue-skinned, human-hating race with an almost-human language (in which Hap is fluent—a skill that proves crucial). GrandPré's (the Harry Potter series) b&w illustrations create an appropriately furtive ambience and partner well with the tongue-in-cheek narrative voice. The convoluted plot culminates in a predictable frantic battle scene in the mine, but the mystery of the blue shoe and other aspects of the saga are not fully resolved until the story returns to Aplanap. Ages 8–12. (Oct.)

Auseon (Jo-Jo and the Fiendish Lot), working from a concept by screenwriter/director Russell, turns in a wacky but underwhelming tale of aliens, friendship and young love. Gene, an excitable eighth-grader whose fingerprints are falling off, and Vince, his bookish best friend, run the Globe, a newsweekly that profiles the aliens hiding out among us. They get this info by pilfering the address book of Gene's cousin Fred, who knows all of the local aliens, but they don't realize that their newsletter is attracting the attention of powerful aliens. These include a local high school guidance counselor named Walter, who is actually the nephew of the malevolent alien Vargon. And worse, he's the good guy, on the run from something even more threatening. Auseon hits some nice, zany notes—the descriptions of some classmates are great (one hyperactive kid at a football game “tackled the homecoming queen, just because no one had stopped him in time”), as are the alien powers. But the story devolves into a silly mess without providing either serious character moments or truly memorable humor. Ages 8–12. (Oct.)

The story of Madison Stanton, dead of unknown causes at age 17, showcases debut author Huntley's skill at writing believable scenes of high school life. Floating in an oblivion she refers to as “is,” Madison bounces from scene to scene in her life, trying to understand how she died and figure out what “the Universe wants me to understand.” She is hampered by the fact that it is only through touching various objects she finds floating with her (her boyfriend's sweatshirt, a baby rattle, a hair clip) that she can connect with her past. The objects are items she lost in life, and she discovers that other spirits are also using the same means to revisit their lives. The premise feels somewhat contrived, and there's a random snapshot quality to the narrative as Madison gets sucked into and wrenched away from moments in her life, which can grow tedious. Nevertheless, Madison is an engaging protagonist, and the author builds a strong sense of tension; much of her story works well as slice-of-life realism. Huntley is an author worth watching. Ages 12–up. (Oct.)

By the time she's a senior, Beatrice Szabo is an expert at emotional detachment, having trained herself not to consider “the houses we lived in as my house, or the street we lived on as our street.” Her biology professor father, constantly following grant money to new positions, has now brought the family to Baltimore. Bea's former best friend—her mother—is coming unhinged, miserable about moving and her deteriorating marriage. So it comes as a surprise to Bea that at her new, small private school she forms a near-instant bond with Jonah Tate, a boy with a past so tragic his withdrawal was probably inevitable. Bea and Jonah's relationship is platonic but intense—two kids drawn to each other by joint recognition of the intelligence behind the robotic facades they wear to get through high school. Bea's darkly comic sensibility carries the story, and Standiford's minor characters—including the over-50 callers on an all-night radio show Bea and Jonah listen to faithfully—provide more humor. There's no happy ending, but that, too, will give this first novel resonance with anybody on the fringe. Ages 13–up. (Oct.)

Peet's third novel featuring crusty sports reporter Paul Faustino updates Othello in a fictional South American setting. Superstar soccer player Otello is traded to a new club, a move engineered by his greedy agent, Diego, and a sleazy politician named Brabanta. Within weeks, Otello elopes with Brabanta's only daughter, the pop superstar Desmerelda. Their Posh and Becks–style union becomes premium tabloid fodder, the scrutiny intensified by racist undercurrents—he's black and she's white. Unlike Peet's first two Faustino novels, Keeper and The Penalty, soccer action takes a backseat to story lines about celebrity obsession, the plight of the underclass and political corruption. The story is prefaced with a cast list, the narrative divided into acts, and some passages are presented as if they were dialogue from a play. Teens who don't know Shakespeare's version can enjoy this without understanding the many allusions. It'll be more difficult for those familiar with the original to overlook the fact that the motivation for the Iago character's betrayal of the too-good-to-be-true Otello never quite adds up. Ages 14–up. (Oct.)

Murphy's (A Savage Road to Thunder) account of the causes and first months of WWI offers a poignant and sometimes graphic introduction to the “war to end all wars.” While a few of the sepia-toned photos and artwork portray haunting imagery (including one of dead bodies in a trench), the six-chapter narrative doesn't bog down in gloom and hopelessness. Instead, its focus—the Christmas truce that occurred along Western Front trenches in 1914—leaves readers with hope in the human spirit and a sense of the folly and futility of the Great War. The grainy pictures of the truce, taken with soldiers' own cameras, show combatants standing shoulder to shoulder, often smiling or exchanging gifts. “German soldiers noticed that a wooden board was being held up by British soldiers with the words 'Merry Christmas'.... Several miles away, another board appeared on the German side that read, 'You no fight, we no fight.' ” Myriad quotations from young men on both sides (often taken from letters home) set a very personal tone. An extensive time line and additional source material wrap up this moving history lesson. Ages 9–12. (Oct.)

Enjoy the diverse flavors of the season with some sparkling originals, a few familiar faces and fresh takes on the classics.

“Have you heard?... A baby is coming!” Joseph asks innkeeper after innkeeper to no avail, until he reaches a group of laughing barnyard animals who happily make room. Joseph's refrain is echoed by rosy-faced angels and heard by shepherds and kings, who gather to peer at the child who “smiled at the world with God's own smile.” The final pages shift to the birth of a modern infant whose family gathers around its crib. The parallel should hearten the youngest readers, though the jubilantly cutesy acrylics are sweet to the point of saccharine. Ages 2–5. (Oct.)

McGrath recasts the Little Red Hen folktale in a holiday setting. A hardworking elf lives at a North Pole workshop with three lazy but likable toys: a reindeer, rabbit and penguin. The elf asks for help growing and decorating a pine tree along with other Christmas activities, but all three toys decline. Finally, the elf has a meltdown. Readers will giggle at the ne'er-do-well toys in Bonnet's sweetly amusing acrylic and pen illustrations (the reindeer floats Christmas ornaments in the tub), but the punch line—the gifts under the tree are all red hens—may require explanation. Ages 2–7. (July)

The smudgy lines of Hallensleben's soft-focus acrylics capture the tranquillity of a snowy day in a semirural setting, while Banks's text reads like a lullaby, as “something” approaches in the days leading up to Christmas. Banks vacillates between ephemeral indications that something special is imminent (“You could smell it in the scent of cinnamon and spice that permeated the air”) and the signs that escape notice (“No one saw who put the gifts under the tree and filled the stockings.... No one, no one, no one”). A gently thrilling reminder of all the elements that make for a celebratory season. Ages 3–6. (Oct.)

Duck, star of Tickle the Duck! and Stop Kissing Me!, is confident he's been nice. Case in point: he's baked a batch of cookies for Santa. But the steaming treats are irresistible and he noisily gobbles them up. When he realizes what he's done, he erupts into tears: “I've been a naughty duck!” The simple layout of Long's illustrations—the action takes place in a single room with a green wall, Christmas tree and fireplace—lets Duck's kinesics take center stage. An earnest apology sets him free, and readers might have their own anxieties assuaged. Ages 3–6. (Oct.)

The high-strung but well-meaning Splat, from Splat the Cat and Love, Splat, returns with a special request for Santa Claus. But when his younger sister expresses doubt that he's been good enough, he overcompensates: he washes the dishes (they weren't even dirty), adds extra decorations to the tree and, to be safe, waits up for Santa to assure him of his good behavior. Splat's frazzled black fur and bulging eyeballs—contrasting with a cool palette of greens and grays—seem to lift off the page, affirming his larger-than-life appeal. Ages 3–7. (Oct.)

Spanish phrases pepper the traditional carol as a joyful child experiences the holiday. On the third day of Christmas, the girl's “amiga” gives her “tres tamalitos,” which sit steaming in an earthen pot, and on the sixth day, she receives “seis trompos girando” (spinning tops). Morales's acrylic illustrations glow with warm, festive colors, evoking lantern light. Phonetic pronunciations for the gifts and numbers are incorporated into the spreads, which lead up to a special final gift—a new sibling. A luminous holiday pick, especially for new big brothers and sisters. Ages 3–7. (Sept.)

The radio and TV host's debut picture book repackages his adult novel of the same name into a short parable. Eddie wants a bike for Christmas, but his twinkly-eyed grandpa tells him that he doesn't see a bike in the boy's future, but rather a Christmas sweater. When a disappointed Eddie takes a dream journey to a snowy forest, he opens a package containing the sweater and is whisked into a procession of idyllic Christmastime moments with his mother, father and grandpa. In the morning, it's the sweater he's excited about, not the shiny bike. Dorman's warm, vintage-style digital illustrations complement Beck's unambiguous message. Ages 4–7. (Oct.)

A sedulous and quirky Santa, who sports bunny slippers and feels a “tingling in his whiskers” (his mustache sticks out like the hands of a clock at 10:10) as Christmas nears, prepares for the arrival of the holiday. He calls his reindeer home and tends to them, then shines his sled, carefully selects toys and climbs a stepladder to tie up his enormous pack. Muth's idyllic, wintry watercolors and pastels set the mood as “the night begins to thrum with magic, the kind of magic that makes reindeer fly.” Readers, like Santa, will feel the magic, too. Ages 4–7. (Sept.)

The world has never seemed fancier to Nancy than at Christmas: there's abundant snow, the house is decked out in lights and, on Christmas Eve, Nancy has a special angel tree topper to hang. The trouble is, Christmas Eve comes with a lot of waiting (Nancy keeps busy decorating cookies, wrapping presents and caroling while awaiting family members' arrival). Nancy's ebullience results in a tearful mishap, but the glamorous heroine's vivacious personality, captured once again in Glasser's cheerfully detailed illustrations and a sprinkling of fancy vocabulary, proves evergreen. Ages 4–7. (Nov.)

Based on Covert and Mills's musical of the same name, when Fritz breaks his sister Clara's nutcracker, his parents take away Mouse Hunter 5000, his beloved video game. Finding the key to the toy closet, he plays anyway, but then the vengeful Mouse King materializes, wanting to ruin Christmas. Fritz is joined by a tiny but formidable Nutcracker girl; they sail to Toy Town, a magical world of living toys, for a showdown with the Mouse King. The sequential panels and text bubbles incorporated into Swain's kinetic visuals complement the clever concept. A CD with a read-aloud and songs from the musical is included. Ages 4–8. (Nov.)

“New York will be the new North Pole!” declares cherry-haired Auntie Claus—she's decided to forgo her annual “business trip” up north so her niece, Sophie, can perform in the school play. Christmas characters like the Sugar Plum Fairy and the ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Future flock to the decadent Bing Cherry Hotel, but transforming the Big Apple into the North Pole comes with humorous complications. Primavera's vibrant acrylics fill the city to the brim with holiday energy (including the milky glow of the aurora borealis), making the third in the series an enchanting spectacle. Ages 4–8. (Oct.)

A glass of milk, a cuddle with mom and a bedtime story don't help a small gray wolf fall asleep; what he needs is a teddy bear. Determined to find out where they come from, he journeys through a fairy tale wood where he meets the Three Little Pigs, Little Red Riding Hood and Santa Claus (and is repeatedly mistaken for a “big bad wolf”). When he fixes the flat tire on Santa's “big red truck,” he's aptly rewarded with the object of his affection. Though some may struggle to decipher what's happening in Ayto's visually complicated spreads, more sophisticated readers will like this offbeat Christmas story. Ages 4–8. (Oct.)

Employing her trademark aesthetic, Isadora sets Moore's classic poem in Africa—her Santa Claus wears bright leopard-print pants and has gray dreadlocks. Mama's “kerchief” is a pink floral do-rag and the narrator is dressed in African attire, as he springs from bed to see the silhouette of Santa's sleigh (the reindeer are adorned with decorative beads) race across the sparse, snowy terrain. The gifts Santa pulls from his bag include a sock monkey, a zebra and three colorful dolls. The dynamic visuals offer a refreshing and original vision of this familiar verse. Ages 4–8. (Oct.)

As the adult speaker of the story nods off in a comfy red chair, the Spirit of Christmas appears, ready to get the narrator in the holiday spirit. What follows is a buoyant, imagistic tribute to the season, as the Spirit lists joys both concrete (“A toy soldier band dressed in matching red sashes!”) and intangible, before offering the reminder: “Because it took nothing but love to begin it,/ it's not really Christmas if love isn't in it.” Tillman's ethereal illustrations (a frozen tree, dotted with peppermints; the cast of “The Twelve Days of Christmas” beside a river) are surreal but captivating. Ages 4–8. (Oct.)

On Christmas Eve, a boy named Owen wonders how to keep his snowman from melting; when a mysterious vessel beams up his snowman, he grabs hold. They're taken to a factory where snowmen are confiscated and disassembled for research purposes: rabbits oversee a snowman-dissecting machine, carrot noses are eaten, scarves shredded and a polar bear picks apart snowflakes with tweezers. In the end, Owen learns “[w]hen a boy makes a snowman, he gives it a heart,” and that's why snowmen really melt. Though kids may have as much difficulty as Owen does figuring out exactly what's going on, they will grasp the bittersweet message. Ages 4–8. (Oct.)

Delicate, ornamental images in colored pencil and watercolors, set in egg-shaped frames, accompany the lyrics to the holiday carol. The scenes are cumulative: French hens and turtle doves join the partridge in the pear tree, which is pictured in an ornate urn. Spirin offers several whimsical touches (the tree's urn sports wings on the first page, and the “Four Calling Birds” are parrots with exotic plumage). Little by little, more of the foreground emerges, until the organized chaos appears in full splendor with elegant pipers, lords, ladies and milking maids, all. An artfully traditional interpretation. Ages 4–8. (Sept.)

This tender telling of the Nativity story focuses on a striped tabby cat named Little Kitten, who is first seen curled up next to its orange mother in a barn. After a donkey, lamb, mice and calf stop by en route to a special event, Little Kitten and its mother follow, peering from the roof at a softly glowing stable. All of the animals gather around to witness the baby “sleeping soundly in the sweet, soft hay.” The baby is never explicitly named or seen, but readers will relish Freedman's serene prose and Mendez's light-infused, realistic renderings. Ages 4–8. (Sept.)

Santore sets Baum's 1902 story about the origins of Santa Claus in a lavishly detailed wooded fantasy landscape. The wood-nymph Necile (she strongly resembles Waterhouse's “Lady of Shalott”) adopts a human child, who she names Claus. As he grows up and leaves the forest, he devotes himself to the welfare of poor children by building toys, eventually enlisting magic reindeer and constructing a sleigh. Santa's evolution from humble woodsman to the man in the red suit will delight readers and answer a few questions to boot. Ages 4–8. (Sept.)

Discerning use of full-page spreads and decorative border art allays Maysen's substantial text in this glowing interpretation. De Marcken's detail-rich watercolors are marked by a vibrant palette (the Nutcracker wears purple and gold, Marie a pink sash-tied dress), while the attention paid to the mechanisms of toys and to dolls' facial expressions (Marie takes the form of a doll) further emphasizes the fantastical nature of the story. This is a loyal and energetic version, best for read-aloud in multiple sittings, given the length of the text. Ages 4–8. (Sept.)

A boy makes a gingerbread pirate crew on Christmas Eve; his mom leaves most of the pirates for Santa, but the boy takes the captain to his room. As the boy sleeps, the captain—sporting a ruffled shirt made of icing and a toothpick peg leg—makes his way downstairs (“Where's my crew? he wondered. And who's this Santa Claus who wants to eat them?”). Luckily, Santa ends up being a friend who gives the pirates a ship of their own. Swashbuckling gusto and a poignant finish should make this a new favorite. Ages 4–10. (Sept.)

Cech's adaptation retains the story-within-a-story structure of Hoffman's original, while Puybaret's stylized illustrations—composed of strong but muted colors and clean, flat shapes—suggest a dizzying fever-dream. After battling the Mouse King, Marie travels to the Nutcracker's hypnagogic homeland where “harlequins somersaulted one over the other” and “Turkish dancers spun so fast they moved like tops across the floor,” awakening on Christmas morning with a headache and sore throat. Fixing her nutcracker, Godfather Drosselmeier relays the Nutcracker's tale over several pages and, years later, the Nutcracker comes to her as a young man, his curse broken. A provocative and layered conceptualization. Ages 5–12. (Oct.)

Helquist's vision of the classic story depicts a hawkish Scrooge (who's a cadaverous shade of green) against a backdrop of bustling Victorian streets, with pleasing touches of detail, humor and a few frightful strokes. When the clock strikes one, announcing the arrival of the first ghost, the moon hangs in an unholy green sky, and the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come stands in a tattered cloak, surrounded by eddying mists (but also draped with strings of Christmas lights). The eye-catching art makes a strong pairing to the accessible abridgment of Dickens's text. Ages 5–up. (Oct.)

In this sweetly engaging chapter book, two siblings visit their grandparents' farm for Christmas. Liam, an especially sensitive bibliophile (he takes 37 books along), notices “White Cow” standing all alone in their field and worries she's lonely. While initially reluctant, narrator Lily goes along with Liam's plan to buy a cow friend for White Cow; as they pool their money, Liam posts signs asking for help from the community and sells his books. With MacLachlan's well-drawn characters and Floca's simple pencil and graphite drawings, it's a poignant story with a classic feel. Ages 7–up. (Oct.)

So what does a genie have to do with Christmas? Plenty, in Gutman's goofy middle-grade novel. After a genie emerges from a meteorite that has crashed into Chase's fifth-grade classroom, Chase (a personable, funny narrator) and his classmates must decide on one wish. Most chapters are devoted to a single potential wish—Chase's is “I wish I had all the money in the world”—as the kids weigh their options. Despite the ample silliness, Gutman works in discussion of topics like war and divorce as well as the ethical and global ramifications of the various wishes. Ages 8–12. (Oct.)

Grimes's stirring verse recounts the Messiah's birth through several first-person perspectives (a shepherd, an innkeeper, Herod). After she is visited by Gabriel, Mary laments, “Now I, alone, remain/ rooted to this dirt floor, dizzy with wonder,/ pinching my wrist,/ waiting to wake/ from this dream.” On the following page, Joseph wonders, “How could I marry a girl/ who is having someone else's baby?” Velasquez offers muted, atmospheric paintings, many seemingly lit by a distant, silvery guiding light. A lyrical, wide-focus meditation on the impact of a singular event. A CD with a reading of the story is included. Ages 9–12. (Oct.)

When 17-year-old Lila's plans to throw the party of the year are derailed by her third-grader brother, Cooper, her revenge involves a news article about melting polar ice caps, which strikes terror into his Christmas-loving heart. So when Cooper and a friend head for the North Pole to save Santa, Lila must chase the kids up the Pacific coast with her indie rocker ex-boyfriend. Readers will easily predict the story's trajectory—this is the stuff of romantic, made-for-TV holiday specials—which is as conventional and crowd-pleasing as the candy canes on the cover. Ages 14–up. (Oct.)