Sunday, December 8, 2013

The Smallest Gift of Christmas - Peter H. Reynolds

Illustrated by the author
2013, Candlewick
small HC $14.00
40 pages
Goodreads rating: 3.55 (67 ratings)
My rating: 2/okay (but I love the simple art and the way the book is laid out, especially the red "drawn" line around the text.)
Endpapers:  pale, pale blue with white splotches (snow?)
Title Page:  simple & lovely
Illustrations: also simple & lovely
1st line:  "Roland was eager for Christmas day."

My comments:  The story has a good premise/moral: that being home is the best gift of all.  However, the trip there is about a selfish boy who only wants a big gift...bigger...bigger..until the very end of the story.  I need to like the WHOLE story - and I guess I didn't care for this one.

Goodreads:  Roland can’t wait for Christmas Day, and when the morning finally arrives he races downstairs to see what is waiting for him. What he sees stops him in his tracks. Could that tiny present really be what he had waited all year for? It has to be the smallest gift he had ever seen! So Roland wishes for something bigger . . . and bigger . . . and bigger. But he’s still convinced there must be a bigger gift somewhere in the universe. Will he know it when he sees it? Peter H. Reynolds’s spare, free-spirited illustrations and heartwarming text make this be-carefulwhat-you-wish-for story the perfect holiday gift.

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