A heartwarming holiday tale.
An illustrated children’s Christmas story about a grouchy author, a surprise visit from Santa Claus, and a lost family found.
P.T. Grumbles is a writer and critic who’s finishing up a large round of interviews with “the most famous people in the world” for publication as a book. When he’s nearly finished with the work, a young child of one of the interviewees asks him if he’s going to include an interview with Santa. Grumbles is attracted to this idea and decides that it would be a fitting conclusion for his book. Although he despises the Christmas holiday—his adoptive parents always made it a miserable experience—he decorates his house to lure Santa in on Christmas Eve and request an exclusive. The plan works: Santa agrees to talk to Grumbles but says that the writer must travel with him on his gift-giving rounds. Along the way, Grumbles asks Santa questions about how he can possibly deliver presents to all the children in the world, how his reindeer can fly, and how Santa gets into homes that lack chimneys; however, the jolly old elf’s answers are vague and mysterious. Soon, Santa asks Grumbles about his past and then enlists his help for a delivery—an event that changes the course of the writer’s life. Hunter presents a tale that’s likely to appeal to young children and may even appeal to young teens. Over the course of the narrative, the tone is warm and humorous, and the narrative style is comfortable and straightforward. The events of the story take a touching turn toward the end, and things wrap up with a satisfying conclusion and a clear moral that will be easy for young readers to understand. The characterization builds to an upbeat, family-centered ending that highlights love and friendship. Hunter’s occasional, full-color painterly illustrations depict Grumbles and Santa at key points in the narrative.
A heartwarming holiday tale.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 978-1-64161-003-2
Page Count: 51
Publisher: Finstock & Tew Publishers
Review Posted Online: May 2, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Readers can still rely on this series to bring laughs.
The Heffley family’s house undergoes a disastrous attempt at home improvement.
When Great Aunt Reba dies, she leaves some money to the family. Greg’s mom calls a family meeting to determine what to do with their share, proposing home improvements and then overruling the family’s cartoonish wish lists and instead pushing for an addition to the kitchen. Before bringing in the construction crew, the Heffleys attempt to do minor maintenance and repairs themselves—during which Greg fails at the work in various slapstick scenes. Once the professionals are brought in, the problems keep getting worse: angry neighbors, terrifying problems in walls, and—most serious—civil permitting issues that put the kibosh on what work’s been done. Left with only enough inheritance to patch and repair the exterior of the house—and with the school’s dismal standardized test scores as a final straw—Greg’s mom steers the family toward moving, opening up house-hunting and house-selling storylines (and devastating loyal Rowley, who doesn’t want to lose his best friend). While Greg’s positive about the move, he’s not completely uncaring about Rowley’s action. (And of course, Greg himself is not as unaffected as he wishes.) The gags include effectively placed callbacks to seemingly incidental events (the “stress lizard” brought in on testing day is particularly funny) and a lampoon of after-school-special–style problem books. Just when it seems that the Heffleys really will move, a new sequence of chaotic trouble and property destruction heralds a return to the status quo. Whew.
Readers can still rely on this series to bring laughs. (Graphic/fiction hybrid. 8-12)Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4197-3903-3
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Amulet/Abrams
Review Posted Online: Nov. 18, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
Little Blue’s fans will enjoy the animal sounds and counting opportunities, but it’s the sparkling lights on the truck’s own...
The sturdy Little Blue Truck is back for his third adventure, this time delivering Christmas trees to his band of animal pals.
The truck is decked out for the season with a Christmas wreath that suggests a nose between headlights acting as eyeballs. Little Blue loads up with trees at Toad’s Trees, where five trees are marked with numbered tags. These five trees are counted and arithmetically manipulated in various ways throughout the rhyming story as they are dropped off one by one to Little Blue’s friends. The final tree is reserved for the truck’s own use at his garage home, where he is welcomed back by the tree salestoad in a neatly circular fashion. The last tree is already decorated, and Little Blue gets a surprise along with readers, as tiny lights embedded in the illustrations sparkle for a few seconds when the last page is turned. Though it’s a gimmick, it’s a pleasant surprise, and it fits with the retro atmosphere of the snowy country scenes. The short, rhyming text is accented with colored highlights, red for the animal sounds and bright green for the numerical words in the Christmas-tree countdown.
Little Blue’s fans will enjoy the animal sounds and counting opportunities, but it’s the sparkling lights on the truck’s own tree that will put a twinkle in a toddler’s eyes. (Picture book. 2-5)Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-544-32041-3
Page Count: 24
Publisher: HMH Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 11, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2014
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