THE FIRST CHRISTMAS STOCKING

Knitting warm dreams along with wool into her socks, a poor child mysteriously earns a lasting reward with an act of charity on Christmas Eve. Sadly carrying on after her mother’s death, little Claire receives a commission for three pairs of stockings just days before Christmas. On her weary way to deliver them, though, she passes a freezing, ragged boy, and is moved to give him two for his feet, two more for his hands, and another for his head. Expecting to have a cold, cheerless Christmas in consequence, she tearfully turns homeward to hang the remaining stocking over the fireplace. In the morning, not only is the sock packed with new wool and other gifts, but the fire in the hearth is lit, and stays lit from then on. Ibatoulline illustrates Winthrop’s mid-length tale with snowy scenes in appropriate soft-focus, featuring a very small child huddled in a dim, sparsely furnished room knitting brightly decorated stockings as her mother—and later on, her loving father—hover in the background. The sentimentality is evident but not overwrought in this tale of kindness recompensed. (Fiction. 8-10)