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shelvesandpages's review
4.0
I find this book to be very cute. It may be extremely cheesy and childish but I still read it every year around Christmas time. There is just something about this book that makes me like it.
pelicanfreak's review
4.0
Picked this up from a pile of books I had my pick of ... it's a very cute, very festive read for little ones. I'd think ages 6-9 or so depending on their maturity or lack thereof. Great book to get that holiday feel; give it to them around the holidays or just for a pick-me-up anytime.
glyptodonsneeze's review
1.0
This audiobook was two hours long and I could barely finish it. Ann M. Martin was presenting one of two arguments: Growing Up In The 1950s Was Not Perfect Because My Friend's Dad Had Cancer or Growing Up In The 1950s Was Perfect Despite My Friend's Dad's Cancer. Tess and her parents and big sister live outside of town somewhere in New England. They're suburban pioneers; twenty years on they're going to bitch and moan endlessly because everyone else wants to live outside of town too and the view out the window is a new house, and not the neighbor's barn. Tess, her best friend, her parents, and her best friend's parents have no discernible personality. Tess' sister has a kind of proto-personality but she's not in a good place to develop characteristics that set her apart from the other white, middle class Protestants around her. These are the days when all the children still made their parents' Christmas presents at school and the toy store on Main Street had non-branded dolls in the window. So, Tess' best friend's dad has cancer and Tess decides to meet Santa and ask him to save her friend's dad. Tess does meet Santa and he says he'll do his best but makes no promises and has no personality either, besides being polite enough to eat a cookie and drink a sip of the tepid cocoa that Tess left out for him. Tess' dog gains the gift of speech on Christmas Eve but all she says is that she was born in the woods and is sanguine about dog food. It is sad when Tess' best friend's dad dies, but even generic parent death is sad. Saying a nine-year-old's father died is sad, but that doesn't create an interesting narrative structure. This book contained an issue novel, a fight with a best friend, a Christmas pageant, a Christmas angel, an enchanted Christmas night, Santa Claus, a perfect Christmas morning, a vacation to Florida, all the other holidays, and a second Christmas Eve, so it really took a year to read, and, heavens!, that was a long year.
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