How Six Found Christmas
by Trina Schart Hyman; illus. by the author
Primary, Intermediate    Holiday    32 pp.
10/25    9780823461929    $15.99

In this reissue of a classic fable (rev. 12/69), a girl who has never heard of Christmas heads into a snowy forest to search for it. There she meets five animals who want to know, variously and aptly, how Christmas feels (the cat); smells (hound dog); looks (hawk); tastes (fox); and sounds (mockingbird). When the questers come across an old green bottle, they decide that it “must be a Christmas” and disperse, disappointed. But the girl takes the bottle home, fills it with branches of red berries and green pine—“and lo! It was Christmas!” Hyman’s lively prose reflects each animal’s preoccupations beautifully; her mostly monochromatic illustrations, with pops of color such as red for the girl’s stocking cap, are arresting and imbued with personality.

From the November/December 2025 issue of The Horn Book Magazine.