I’ll Be Home for Christmas
Toot and Puddle
By Holly Hobbie

Christmas and a Lesson in Literature
All Wrapped into One

    I have become a fan of Holly Hobby. When you need something for a special event in the lives of your children--whether those children are yours or someone else’s--she comes to the rescue. Perhaps it is something in the air.

    Anyway, just about the time my grandchildren will be traveling to Utah to see my mother (their great grandmother) for the first time, along comes I’ll Be Home for Christmas. Toot, Holly Hobby’s famous pig pal, has been at a family reunion in Scotland (the lovely watercolors on the first pages are filled with tartans and berets and even a stamp from the old country.) There he receives a magic gift from a family “ancient” of 100 years. My Ellie and Gracie’s great grandmother isn’t quite that old, but they will relate to this experience, I’m sure.

    Not only will I’ll Be Home for Christmas fill this special need when many young children’s relatives are living longer lives, but, I was delighted, as a poet and novelist, at another niche it will fill. There is no longer a need to despair because literature for very young children doesn’t address literary conventions. This little book is about the famous Toot and Tulip’s long Christmas preparations and their wait for Puddles' return from the Emerald Isle. In the process of these widely separate events, children are not only exposed to the smells of fruit cake and the glitter of tree decorations they will experience--possibly for the first time--two parallel stories that cut in and out--from Puddles' adventures on the road home and the little cottage “back in Woodcock” where his friends are cutting a Christmas tree and worrying about a snowstorm.

    Children will also find themselves in a story that hints at magic but--like a good short story in the New Yorker, trusts its readers. In other words, it doesn’t bop the child over the head explaining the mysterious gift Puddles has received or come right out and tell the young reader who the Puddles’ rescuer is on this snowy Christmas Eve. Even the pictures aren’t so definitive they take away the fun of imagination.

    Hooray (again!) for Hobby! With more stories of this kind for children, our tots may indeed grow up with a preference and understanding for the subtleties of good literature.