Pete the Cat Saves Christmas.
Created and illustrated by James Dean. Story by Eric Litwin. Harper. $17.99.
Charlie and the Christmas Kitty.
By Ree Drummond. Illustrated by Diane de Groat. Harper. $17.99.
The Berenstain Bears’
Old-Fashioned Christmas. By Jan & Mike Berenstain. Harper. $12.99.
Santa on the Loose! By Bruce
Hale. Illustrations by Dave Garbot. Harper. $7.99.
It’s Christmas! By Jack
Prelutsky. Pictures by Marylin Hafner. Greenwillow/HarperCollins. $3.99.
Cowboy Christmas. By Rob
Sanders. Illustrated by John Manders. Golden Books. $10.99.
Baby’s Christmas. By Esther
Wilkin. Illustrated by Eloise Wilkin. Golden Books. $6.99.
As sure as seasonal
songs showing up in every imaginable retail establishment, seasonal kids’ books
show up every year in plenty of time to become Christmas gifts or get kids into
the spirit of the holidays. In this year as in others, the books whose view of
the holiday is slightly askew are particularly enjoyable in the latest crop of
works for ages 4-8. One of them is Pete
the Cat Saves Christmas, featuring huge-eyed Pete on his surfboard in Key
West, Florida, getting an emergency call from an ailing Santa, who has caught a
cold and won’t be able to make it this Christmas. Can Pete save the holiday?
Well, of course he can, with the oft-repeated refrain, “And although I am
small,/ at Christmas we give,/ so I’ll give it my all” to encourage him. A road
trip in Pete’s minibus soon takes him to the North Pole, where the bus gets
packed with presents and pulled aloft by Santa’s reindeer, and Pete delivers
gifts to every single child on Santa’s list, finishing just as dawn breaks –
and kids everywhere are delighted. As they will be by this amusingly offbeat
variation on the “someone unexpected saves Christmas” motif.
For some amusement
with dogs instead of cats – well, of dogs in addition to cats – there is the
return of Charlie from Charlie the Ranch
Dog, having a seasonal adventure in Charlie
and the Christmas Kitty. Charlie, basset hound and self-proclaimed King of
the Ranch, is, as usual, not very self-aware and not very aware of events
around him, either, as he watches Christmas decorations brought into the house,
sees them being set up, then goes on to do what he does best – nap. That’s a
perfect Christmas for Charlie, but something turns up that he certainly did not
expect: an adorable kitten (Charlie first thinks it’s a rabbit and, in an
absolutely hilarious illustration, “surrounds” it). The kitten arrival is quite
unacceptable, so Charlie decides to “go back to sleep and pretend this never
happened,” but of course the kitten is still there when he wakes up – and also of
course, after a series of minor misadventures, he decides it’s not so bad after
all and declares, “I guess the kitty can stay.” And a good time is had by all –
notably including families enjoying this delightful book.
Other Christmas
goodies are somewhat less special but still get solid (+++) ratings. Berenstain
Bears books are always a touch heavy on the “family values” emphasis – we get
it already! – but certainly retain their charm for fans of the characters in
this multi-decade series. The Berenstain
Bears’ Old-Fashioned Christmas presents exactly what the title promises: Ma
and Pa and the kids visiting Gramps and Gran for a seasonal celebration filled
with snow, Christmas cards, tree decorating, folksy (or bearsy) homemade
ornaments, the words to “The Twelve Days of Christmas,” ornament-making
instructions, “gingerbread bears,” and even a very minor crisis (Gramps forgets
to open the damper when starting a fire, so Pa has to step in and do it).
Carolers, eggnog, “Jingle Bells,” even suggested treats for backyard animals
(such as an apple with sunflower seeds and a pinecone spread with peanut butter
and rolled in seeds) – they are all here, presented as usual with warmth, mild
amusement and a heaping helping of holiday spirit in the usual Berenstain
style.
The pictures, not the narrative,
are the thing in the (+++) Santa on the
Loose! This is a sort of Where’s
Waldo? for Christmas, with Santa searching for clues to find out who stole
all the toys just before the holiday. The six suspects are shown at the start,
and then it is just a matter of seeing which one is best matched to the clues
Santa finds. But first kids have to find Santa, who is hidden in each
illustration (not as well as Waldo – on purpose). Find Santa, see what he is
holding, check back with the pictures of the suspects, and figure out who took
the toys – that is the whole plot here, as Santa scours the toy workshop, Ye
Olde Elf Inn, the polar bears’ ice cave, and other busy locations (where, the
underlying plot aside, there seems to be plenty of activity – and toys galore).
Eventually, Santa finds enough clues to know who the culprit is, and there is
even a (rather lame) explanation of what was going on. The search is the thing
here, not the story – and there is a bonus search for nine additional objects
offered at the end, for a touch of extra enjoyment.
The poems are the main
dose of enjoyment in It’s Christmas!
This is a Level 3 book (“complex plots for confident readers”) in the I Can Read series. The poems’ subjects
are straightforward in this (+++) book, but as usual, Jack Prelutsky presents
ordinary topics in a highly amusing way. In the traditional “Christmas list”
poem that is inevitable in books like this one, for example, he neatly mixes
the straightforward with the fantastic: “I’d like a stack of comic books,/ a
dozen apple pies,/ a box of chocolate brownies,/ and an elephant that
flies…” He gets a bit maudlin in “The
Mistletoe” and rather obvious with the unwanted gift of underwear, but “Singing
Christmas Carols” is fun (“Dad sings like a buffalo/ and Mother like a moose”),
and so is “Another Santa Claus,” about the proliferation of bearded,
red-and-white-coated ho-ho-ho-ing characters seen during the season. New readers will enjoy sounding out the simple
rhymes and following the various threads of the seasonal stories – including
the final one, about the need to clean up the puddle that a “little tubby
floppy” Christmas puppy inevitably produces.
Of course, there are
also some nice seasonal books for families with children below the 4-8 age
range. Cowboy Christmas is for ages
2-5, and is the story of three cowboys – Dwight, Darryl and Dub – stuck out on
the range three days before Christmas within nothing’ but cows an’ grub from Cookie
an’ a cactus for a Christmas tree. They try decoratin’ the cactus with hay and
cans of corn, but it looks “downright ugly,” and the cowboys are unhappy. They
remember more-enjoyable Christmases from the past, but nothin’ they do seems
t’work out right – not the charred sugar-molasses-bean cookies, not the
“downright pitiful” cows with twigs for antlers that they hoped would look like
reindeer. But come Christmas itself, they find a right nice surprise back at
camp, and have a rootin’ tootin’ delightful Christmas after all (with a wink
from Cookie). A pleasant (+++) book for kids who enjoy stereotypical cowboy
tales, Cowboy Christmas nicely mixes
the silly with the sentimental.
The new board-book
version of Baby’s Christmas, a book
that is all sentiment, is for even younger children, from birth to age four.
Originally published in 1959, the book – meant to be read to baby, not by baby
– shows a sweet, red-haired infant enjoying gifts such as a music box that
plays “Rock-a-bye, baby,” a string of wooden beads, a soft toy dog with floppy
ears, a small drum, a ball, all-wood scooter and rocking horse, old-fashioned
bouncy seat that looks like a museum piece, even a wood milk truck with doors
that open and small milk bottles that companies would never be allowed to sell
today. The final gift is a big wooden toy box in which to store everything, and
the final picture shows baby putting everything away – a bit unrealistic, but a
nice touch of idealism. A cute (+++)
book filled with nostalgia both in its gentle rhymes and in its pictures of
toys from an earlier time, Baby’s
Christmas does not really fit into an era of plastic and electronics. But
for that very reason, it may be something that parents will enjoy reading to
and with their little ones as a reminder of the contrast between Christmas now
and Christmas half a century ago.
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