Liberty's Christmas (review)

The repo man has held off as long as he can from stripping possessions from the Joneses for their delinquent loan payments—it is the Depression, after all—but the day of reckoning is now at hand. After selling off a grove of trees to a wealthy lumbering family, the Joneses still don't have enough to keep their main cash crop—a huge stand of Christmas trees they've patiently cultivated over the years. Sixteen-year-old Liberty, who is a do-it-now/apologize-later kind of girl, still has a couple of plans. Running off to Houston to borrow money from a rich relative only gets her mugged and dragged home on a freight car; her second attempt, entering a tree in an Austin Christmas tree competition, requires some behind-the-scenes manipulation and sleight of hand (well, sleight of tree), as well as some help from her new pal Rudy Garcia, but it eventually carries the day. Platt's plot is tall as a redwood and smooth as a birch, with dialogue that crackles like fatwood on a fire. Some garden-variety cussin' may argue against this as a "perfect holiday story" for younger readers, but middle-schoolers should find Liberty's grand escapade to be just the right feel-good caper for a winter break wind-down.