The Christmas Tree Ship

K-Gr 2—A narrator tells of his boyhood with his grandfather, a lighthouse keeper on Lake Michigan. The man likes to tell the stories at the holidays while he carves ornaments. The boy's favorite is a tale about a schooner that went down in a November 1912 storm while on its way to Chicago with a full load of Christmas trees. This anecdote is not enough to hang a picture book on, despite its being based on a historical event, and the basic prose of the story occasionally breaks into awkward rhyming stanzas. The nostalgia is reinforced by attractive, old-fashioned oil and acrylic paintings; unfortunately, the scenes with Grandpa Axel telling his "old" story of the 1912 wreck seem to be set in 1912 themselves, judging by Grandma Hannah's clothing. Mildly pleasant but flawed.—Eva Mitnick, Los Angeles Public Library