The Christmas Stove by Alta Halverson Seymour. Christmas Around the World Series. Republished by Purple House Press, 2021.

Two orphan children, Peter and Trudi, come to stay with their aunt Tante Maria Fingerhut in her poor little cottage in the Swiss mountains. But will the poverty-stricken Tante Maria be able to care for the children when she can barely feed herself? And how will they ever be able to celebrate Christmas?

“But though Tante was looking kindly at Trudy, she was just ready to shake her head when Peter caught her eye. Instead, she said, ‘Well, there are several weeks yet before Christmas. Who knows what may happen in that time? Come now, it is almost bedtime. We must find a comfortable place for you to sleep. I had moved my ed into the kitchen here for the winter so that one fire would do, but in the other room is the porcelain stove. Peter shall make a fire in that while Trudi helps me make up your beds.’

Trudi was so delighted with the stove that she could hardly leave it; and no wonder, for it was made of tiles, each one with its own picture. Some represented fairy tales, and there were castles and people and landscapes. The clear light from Tante Maria’s candle fell directly on the one Trudi knew she would like best of all.

‘Oh, look!’ she cried with delight. It’s the Christkindli in the manger, Peter. And the animals and His Mother. Oh, Tante, this is a real Christmas stove!'”

Peter and Trudi are young but hard working children, and they soon prove their worth to Tante Maria and to the various members of the small community in Tante Maria’s little village. It’s a lovely little book, only 94 pages long, with lots of traditional Swiss Christmas customs embedded in the story and a theme of learning to deal with difficult people and to love one’s enemies, especially at Christmas time.

I only have a few of Alta Halverson Seymour’s Christmas stories in my library, but reading this one makes me want to buy all of them. The ones I have are:

• Arne and the Christmas Star (Norway)
• A Grandma for Christmas (Norway)
• The Christmas Stove (Switzerland)

The ones I would like to have:

• The Christmas Camera (Sweden)
• The Christmas Compass (Netherlands)
• The Christmas Donkey (France)

These books can be borrowed by member families from Meriadoc Homeschool Library.

The Lion in the Box by Marguerite de Angeli. Republished by Purple House Press.

“Sunday, the children went to Sunday school. Mama kept Sooch with her at home. Ben went into the kindergarten class under Mrs. McAlister’s care. Already, he could sing with the other little ones. The girls were in Miss Von Tipple’s class. This Sunday, she told them more about Christmas, about the shepherds on the hills of Judea, the angel choir and the coming of the three kinds with their gifts for the Baby. There was a tree decorated with bright tinsel, a shiny star at the very top and candles. Lili wished their own tree would be as bright and beautiful.”

This slightly fictionalized but true story of a family of five children who live with their widowed, working mother is dedicated to Marguerite de Angeli’s friend, Lili Galen, who is one of the children in the story. Lili’s family is poor, but as the saying goes, rich in love. Mama works two jobs to support herself and her children. Christmas is coming, but Lili knows that the doll from the department store window and the real toy train that she wishes she could buy for little brother Ben are way beyond the family’s means. Nevertheless, the children work hard, take care of one another, and appreciate what they do have–food to eat, a small Christmas tree, and homemade decorations.

When the family receive a huge surprise Christmas box, speculation is that the box contains a lion! But what it really contains and who sent it are revelations of the abundance of Christmas grace that can and often does inhabit the world. I love knowing that this is a true story and that people did and still do, I believe, give of themselves and their resources to others less fortunate than themselves.

The Brontes–Charlotte, Emily, Branwell, and Anne–are endlessly fascinating subjects for books, fiction and nonfiction. The fact that the Bronte children made little books for each other is a good focus for a book about the hunger for stories that we all have.

I don’t believe I’ve ever seen any illustrations by Briony May Smith, although as I look she has illustrated other books. I’m a fan. The children look like real children , and yet the pictures have a fairy tale, once upon a time quality to them, too. It reminds me a little bit of one of my favorite modern illustrators, Brett Helquist, but Ms. Smith has her own distinctive, original, and recognizable style.

“This is the story of the little Brontes, who lived in a house on the edge of the wild moors–and also in a world of their own imagining.” Sara O’Leary is also a new-to-me author, and she lovingly tells the story of the Bronte children with their pets and toy soldiers, miniature books and real books, and their hunger for stories. It’s a well-told tale, with added information in the back about how to make your own little book, an author’s note about books and the Brontes, and a timeline of the Brontes’ life and times.

The book could certainly be a prequel and encouragement to lots of imaginative play for the children who read it, and it also might lead to the reading of other books about the Brontes and their amazing lives and accomplishments. Some of those follow-up books:

Charlotte Bronte and Jane Eyre by Stewart Ross. A picture book biography that focuses on the writing of Charlotte’s most famous novel, Jane Eyre.

The Return of the Twelve by Pauline Clarke (British title The Twelve and the Genii). Fantasy fiction about the Bronte children and how their toy soldiers come to life and need help to get back home.

The Young Brontes: Charlotte and Emily, Branwell and Anne by Mary Louise Jarden. Historical fiction (not fantasy) about the lives of the young Bronte children.

Girl With a Pen: Charlotte Bronte by Elisabeth Kyle. A biography of just Charlotte.

The Bronte Sisters: The Brief Lives of Charlotte, Emily and Anne by Catherine Reef. Biography for young adults about all of the Brontes and their “brief lives.”

Some picture books are almost poems, and this book is one of those. Mr. Tresselt uses alliteration and rhythm and parallelism to make the text flow, perfect for reading aloud. The story begins with a cat looking out of the window at the rain drops coming down, and it ends with all of the drips and drops gathered into waves on the ocean, and then the rain stops. The book has a simple but satisfying narrative arc to accompany the poetry of it. And if you’re counting, it can be an introduction to the science of the water cycle and weather and rain. So you get poetry, narrative, and science all wrapped up with a nice bow.

Rain Drop Splash was Alvin Tresselt’s first book for children, and it was a Caldecott Honor book in 1947. He was blessed to have experienced illustrator Leonard Weisgard who was asked by the publisher to do the pictures for Tresselt’s debut picture book, and I’m sure that gave Mr. Tresselt’s career a big boost, especially with the Caldecott recognition. The illustrations are indeed beautiful, black and white with splashes of yellow and red in each spread. Weisgard must have insisted on the color since his website biography explains, “As a schoolboy in New York, he was dissatisfied with the books supplied by the public schools he attended. He found the illustrations monotonous and thought that the world could not be all that dreary and limited to only one color.”

As for Alvin Tresselt, he says in the Afterword to my paperback copy of the book,

“RAIN DROP SPLASH started out as a mountain stream named Hyacinth, and I was going to follow her down the mountain until she eventually reached the sea. But somewhere along the journey my personified brook got hopelessly lost, and I realized that this approach would never work. I then decided to “tell it like it is,” and I traced the rain falling on a mountainside and making its way to the sea in a completely realistic manner. I accomplished this in less than five hundred words.”

Five hundred words, but such good words: dripped, splashed, trickled, splunked, tumbling, pickerel weed, barges, scows, tankers, buoy. I liked the words, and the phrases, and the full sentences, each one chosen carefully to create a whole picture of what happens when it rains. Rain Drop Splash is a good book to read aloud to preschoolers when it rains, when there are floods, or when you go on a boat ride or a visit to the ocean. (It would have been good during Hurricane Harvey days here in Houston. There is a farmer’s field and a road that floods in the book, but nothing scary.) Rain Drop Splash is also one of the many picture books listed in my preschool curriculum list, Picture Book Preschool, available for download at Biblioguides.

The Loner by Ester Wier was a debut novel for the author and received a Newbery Honor in 1964.

“During the 1960s and 1970s, Ester Wier published other works of fiction and non-fiction for children and young adults that were praised by critics for their well-researched settings and details. Many of her books are ‘stories of children, primarily boys, who are seeking acceptance by themselves or others,’ and Ester Wier has been lauded for her understanding of ‘youth’s efforts to stand on its own’ and children’s ‘need to achieve and be accepted.'”

The loner of the title is a boy who at the beginning of the story has no name. He travels with the migrant crop-pickers from place to place, catching a ride with anyone who will give him transportation, food, and a place to sleep in exchange for his work harvesting the crops. He doesn’t remember his parents or what happened to them, and he has never had a family or a friend until he meets Raidy, a fellow crop-picker who does have a family and who chooses to care about the boy and call him friend.

Unfortunately, tragedy strikes, and the boy is again on his own and near despair in the wild and lonely Big Country of Montana. At his lowest point, he is rescued by Boss, a big woman, something of a loner herself, who is a sheepherder. The Boy takes the name David, and along with the name he begins to learn how to care for other people and allow them to care for him—but not without a few rather dangerous and serious mistakes along the way.

I read this story of a boy coming of age in sheep country several years ago when my children were using a literature based curriculum that recommended the book. I remember liking it then, but as I read it a second time, I loved it even more. The analogy between the boy David and an orphan sheep, the way David learns from his mistakes, the way Boss learns to communicate her motherly and compassionate feelings to David, the way other adultscome alongside and help David to grow up and become responsible and connected—all of these were themes and issues that were addressed in the book, and addressed and worked through well.

There are content considerations (SPOILERS) that you may want to know about. The girl, Raidy, dies in a rather gruesome farm accident. Animals die in the book, including a pet sheep that the reader has probably grown to love. David kills a rogue grizzly bear with a gun that he has been taught to use by a caring adult.

Despite the rough and rural setting in which David and others must learn hard lessons about the dangers of winter weather and isolated spaces, the story is ultimately hopeful and encouraging. David, a boy who has been dealt a bad hand in life, grows to be a young man who knows how to make good choices and be independent while also leaning on the strengths and wisdom and love of others.

“Once upon a time there was a very old man and a very old woman. They lived in a nice clean house which had flowers all around it, except where the door was. But they couldn’t be happy because they were so very lonely.”

Millions of Cats is said to be the inaugural modern American picture book. The text is hand lettered with pen and ink illustrations, and on the first page we get a folktale-like view of the very old man and the very old woman and their little house. As the story progresses the old man sets out on a journey to find a cat to relieve their loneliness, but he is a somewhat indecisive fellow. He ends up finding and bringing home, not one cat but rather:

What do I love about this book? I love the little old woman who thinks that a nice fluffy cat will assuage their loneliness. I love the little old man who agrees to travel far and wide to fulfill his wife’s desire. I love all of the cats, covering the hills in the distance and in the foreground sitting, pouncing, cavorting, and even one dancing on its hind legs. And I even love the rather violent solution to the problem of too many cats where the old couple are left with just one very special, pretty cat. I spent some time as a child trying to figure out how all of those cats could eat each other up with only one little noncombatant cat remaining. I never did understand it, which just made the book more beautifully mysterious.

Deborah Ray Kogan has written a picture book biography about Wanda Gag and about the road to the writing and publication of Millions of Cats. I haven’t read it, but it looks like a great book for background and extra information on the author and her life. Until I get around to the biography, however, I’ll just get out my copy of Millions of Cats every once in a while and read it to a child or read it for myself–with a cup of hot chocolate or tea in a rocking chair just like the very old man and the very old woman on the final page of the book. And maybe our one cat will be playing happily at my feet.

April’s Kittens by Clare Turlay Newberry, Caldecott Honor book, 1941.

This picture book is first of all a Cat Book. If you’re a cat person, you will probably like it, and if not . . . maybe you will still enjoy the story. And the illustrations. Ms. Newberry must have been a Cat Person who liked to draw cats because she wrote and illustrated at least two other cat books, Mittens, about a boy named Richard who wants a cat and Babette, about the adventures of a Siamese kitten. Her picture book Barkis, another Caldecott Honor book, is about a cocker spaniel, but it has a kitten in it, too. And Marshmallow, yet another Caldecott Honor book features a rabbit and a cat. Cats are everywhere in Clare Turlay Newberry’s books, and the cat pictures in April’s Kittens are as endearing as the story.

April is a “nice little girl” who lives in New York City with her mother, her father, and a black cat named Sheba. Other than the slightly old-fashioned interactions between April’s parents, there is nothing in the story or the illustrations that dates the story or makes it less than timeless. The family lives in a small “one-cat apartment” because “nobody has much room in New York because so many people are trying to live there at the same time.” That certainly sounds like present day New York City. And when Sheba has three kittens, April’s daddy says that they can only keep one cat, either Sheba or one of the kittens.

The remainder of the story is about what happens to Sheba and her kittens, Charcoal, Butch, and Brenda. April, of course, wants to keep all four cats, but there just is not enough room. April is six years old and still sleeps in a crib because there is not enough room for a real bed for her in their tiny apartment. To find out how April and her family solve their cat dilemma and their space dilemma, you’ll have to read the story.

This picture book is a bit more text-heavy than some more modern picture books, with several paragraphs on one page and a large illustration on the facing page. However, it would be perfectly readable in one read aloud session for five and six year olds, maybe even younger. And again, if you or your child is a Cat Person, then the story will not be too long, nor will the pictures lose their appeal even after much perusal.

Another beautiful Caldecott Honor book.