A Very Marley Christmas. By
John Grogan. Illustrated by Richard Cowdrey. Harper. $9.99.
Pete the Cat Saves Christmas.
Created and illustrated by James Dean. Story by Eric Litwin. Harper. $17.99.
Mary Engelbreit’s Nutcracker.
By Mary Engelbreit. Harper. $9.99.
Backhoe Joe. By Lori
Alexander. Illustrated by Craig Cameron. Harper. $15.99.
The Fairy Bell Sisters #6:
Christmas Fairy Magic. By Margaret McNamara. Illustrations by Catharine
Collingridge. Balzer+Bray/HarperCollins. $15.99.
Christmas is a time of
tradition, and one tradition in publishing is the reissuing of Christmas-themed
books just in time for new seasonal celebrations. The best of these are
evergreens that are delightful year after year, their new editions (or new
printings of old editions) providing a fine opportunity for families to
reacquaint themselves with books from earlier years or to make those books’
acquaintance for the first time. A Very
Marley Christmas dates to 2008 and is a typical story of the world’s most
trouble-prone dog and the family that loves him anyway (or, more accurately,
because he’s so endearing even as he destroys everything in sight). Marley
stops Daddy from bringing in a Christmas tree by playing tug-of-war; he gets tangled
in Christmas lights as Mommy tries to string them; when the tree is finally up,
he runs toward it enthusiastically and knocks it over; he wears his Christmas
stocking on his face; and so on. But Marley inevitably brings more joy than
irritation: Cassie and Baby Louie wish for snow on Christmas Eve, but there is
none – until, on Christmas Day, Marley pushes through the closed curtains to
get someone to open them, and lo and behold, there is snow everywhere. Of
course, Marley promptly runs out into it, skids and slides, gets covered in the
white stuff, then brings it indoors and shakes it all over everything. But the
ever-tolerant family thinks all of that is wonderful – resulting in a typically
warmhearted conclusion for John Grogan’s book, in which the story is ably
illustrated with realistic-looking scenes by Richard Cowdrey.
There is nothing realistic
in Pete the Cat Saves Christmas, but
realism is scarcely the point of this 2012 book, in which Santa comes down with
a cold and decides to call on Pete to handle Christmas deliveries. Huge-eyed
Pete is on his surfboard in Key West, Florida, when the emergency call comes
in. 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. The collaboration of
James Dean and Eric Litwin, which includes a link to a free song and story
download, is an amusingly offbeat variation on the “someone unexpected saves
Christmas” motif and will be a real treat for Pete’s fans.
Fans of Mary Engelbreit’s
stylized drawings and simplified storytelling will enjoy Mary Engelbreit’s Nutcracker, originally published in 2011. It
tells the Nutcracker tale as seen in Tchaikovsky’s ever-popular ballet, with a
couple of references to the E.T.A. Hoffmann story on which Tchaikovsky’s work
is based – but not too many such references, because the original Nussknacker und Mausekönig
is a very dark story indeed. The ballet lightens it considerably, and Engelbreit
does so to an even greater degree, to make her book suitable for young
children. Engelbreit’s characters are all roly-poly and pleasant, with little
Marie, who is supposed to be seven years old, looking even younger than in most
stage productions of Tchaikovsky’s work, whie Godfather Drosselmeyer looks more
like a Disneyesque fairy than the faintly sinister figure he is even on stage
(never mind the very sinister and
complex one he is in the original tale). “The very fierce Mouse King” does not
seem especially scary here and is not intended to be, and has only a single
head (not seven, as in the original tale and some stage productions), and is
defeated fairly easily and without visible bloodshed. And so Marie and the
Nutcracker Prince journey to his kingdom, which Engelbreit calls Toyland rather
than the Land of Sweets. Here, the illustrations encapsulate some of the
marvelous “character dances” from the ballet, and eventually Marie and the
Prince return to the real world – where the prince promises to make Marie Queen
of Toyland “when you are grown.” And so there is a happy ending,
Engelbreit-style, and a book that Engelbreit fans will cherish whether or
not their families go to see one of the
inevitable Christmas-season performances of Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker.
The
proliferation of reissues of seasonal books does not, of course, prevent the
emergence of entirely new ones that fit, indirectly if not directly, into this
time of year. There is nothing particularly Christmas-oriented about Lori
Alexander’s Backhoe Joe, for example,
but the book goes well with one such as A Very Marley Christmas and the not-uncommon request that kids make
for a puppy as a gift. Alexander tells about a little boy named Nolan who has
always wanted – not a puppy, but a backhoe. And one day, this little boy
encounters a stray, yellow, smiling, big-eyed backhoe in his neighborhood, but
the heavy equipment is so shy that it backs into some nearby bushes and
“wouldn’t budge. The rocks in Nolan’s backpack gave him an idea.” Nolan likes
to collect rocks, and now he lays them out in a line to tempt the backhoe with
“tasty treats,” which the backhoe happily scoops up. “Nolan gave the backhoe a
pat behind the loader, which made his bucket wiggle like crazy.” The notion of
a pet backhoe equipped with doglike mannerisms is a highly amusing one, made
more so by Craig Cameron’s illustrations, which show the backhoe doing lots of
doglike things: “he leaked all over the driveway,” and “he buried his cone in
the flower bed,” and he “revved at the mailman,” and so forth. Nolan names the
backhoe Joe, and his bemused parents say he has to train it if he wants to keep
it, so Nolan tries techniques such as playing catch, visiting the park, and
letting Joe dig at a delayed construction project. The two soon bond, but then
Nolan sees a “lost backhoe” sign on a tree and realizes that “someone’s missing
you” and “I think you miss them, too” – and indeed, Joe looks downcast as Nolan
examines the sign. So Joe goes back to his construction-crew owner, and Nolan’s
parents compliment him for how well he took care of Joe, saying he is ready for
a pet of his own. But “then Nolan remembered how much work Joe was” and thinks
he would be better off with “something that will sit still – and purr.” Such
as…a cement mixer! The hilarious ending to this unusual pet-focused book may
not stop kids from insisting that they really want a puppy or kitten for
Christmas, but it may distract them long enough for parents to change the
subject.
Some kids old enough to be
distracted from hectic Christmas preparations by a longer book will have fun
with the new, sixth entry in Margaret McNamara’s series about The Fairy Bell Sisters. This sequence
imagines that Tinker Bell has five siblings named Clara, Rosy, Goldie, Sylva
and Squeak (the last a tiny baby fairy). In Christmas
Fairy Magic, it is just 10 days before Christmas, and all five sisters are
eagerly anticipating Tink’s return home. She has promised to bring decorations
and gifts from Neverland, and has insisted that she is taking care of
everything – her sisters are not to do any work at all preparing for the
holiday. But things are so busy and happy in Fairyland that Clara, Rosy, Goldie
and Sylva really want to take part; and besides, when there are only five days
until Christmas, Tink is not home yet, and the Christmas Fair is about to take
place on Sheepskerry Island, the sisters just have to be each other’s Secret Christmas Fairy and search for nice
presents for each other. Things go awry, though, and it takes some fairy-carol
singing to make the Fairy Bell sisters feel better – for a time. But soon,
matters get even more complicated, as Squeak disappears, and the sisters have
to search far and wide, despite a cold wind that chills their wings, until they
find Squeak and a very, very special Christmas gift: a brand-new fairy baby
that they name Noel. And of course Tink does eventually show up, and everyone
is happy, and the whole book simply oozes sweetness that may be too much for
readers except at the very youngest end of the book’s recommended age range of
6-10. Christmas Fairy Magic is too
predictable and too sugary in many ways, and the Catharine Collingridge
illustrations are too ordinary to add much to it; but it gets a (+++) rating because
at least some little girls who love holiday stories about other little girls
will enjoy it – and because Christmas is, among other things, a time to be
generous.
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