Just Right for Christmas (review)

When a king spies a bolt of beautiful red cloth for sale on Christmas Eve day, he snaps it up to be made into a cloak for the princess. The castle seamstress puts the leftover fabric outside the back door, where the kitchen maid finds it and takes it to make a jacket for her mother. Her scraps are, in turn, used by Bertie Badger to make a hat for his pa, which leaves enough for Samuel Squirrel to use to make a pair of gloves for his wife. The last scrap flies out the squirrel's window and is found by Millie Mouse, who makes it into a scarf for "little Billy." Just as the clothes (and the sewers) diminish in size as the story goes on, so do the wrappings get less and less extravagant, but no matter—everyone is delighted with their gifts: "Each present was so soft and red and Christmassy and felt just right . . . just how Christmas should feel." This British import is obviously stitched from the same cloth as the Yiddish folktale "Something from Nothing" (as in Gilman's Something from Nothing, BCCB 2/94), and the Christmas-themed riff on the story works quite well. Simple language and repeated phrases ("snipped and sewed . . . and snipped and sewed") make this well-suited to its young audience and to reading aloud. Bearshaw's mixed-media pictures depict a world of rustic coziness in which animals walk upright and coexist happily with the human characters. The cheerful, painted-looking figures are mixed with occasional snippets of digital or paper patterns for clothing or backgrounds, and small, specific details (a piece of a sewing pattern, a red fez on the badger) add further visual interest. Pair this with Taback's Joseph Had a Little Overcoat (BCCB 3/00), enjoy it as a fresh, low-key Christmas tale, or give it as a gift along with needle and thread and a bundle of red cloth.