Wolf Christmas
Kindergarten-Grade 2?After waking up from a winter's nap, a family of wolves anticipate a visit from Uncle Louis, a funny relative who likes to share interesting adventures with the young pups. Stinkface, the young narrator, relates how on this particular night, Louis shows them something special. With him, they bound through the woods, stopping on a hillside above a small village. There, they observe colored lights, smell various scents, and hear singing, obvious evidence of a Christmas celebration. At the conclusion, while listening to the human voices, the wolves begin to sing (howl), too. Stinkface concludes, "We didn't see the humans, but we could hear them. They were singing. We listened. It was nice. I thought, Even if they were dangerous, they are animals, just like we are." The childlike felt-marker illustrations convey the playfulness and camaraderie of the wolves in their snowy nighttime habitat, but the text is unconvincing. The sudden anthropomorphizing of Stinkface's perspective, the sly but too tenuous connection with Christmas, and the vapid conclusion do not ring true. Most children will be left out in the cold.?MMHCopyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.