"A First Christmas; Friends and Festivity" by Sean Noonan

Full of princesses, trolls, wizards, and--um, er, Santa--this book is a Christmas fairy tale. Essentially, there is a hideous troll with no friends and no record ever celebrating Christmas. So, two children set out to have a huge Christmas party for the troll to show he is loved and for him to know how great Christmas is. There are various adventure scenes that I will not spoil. The reading level is easy enough for little ones to understand but complex enough to evoke imagination. Pictures included are very rudimentary and are drawn by the author's young daughter. I would have liked there to be more of an emphasis on the real meaning of Christmas. In terms of other criticisms, I did not like when the author wrote that Santa drinks sherry (something not appropriate for very young children to read--let alone know the word). Other than those two aspects, the book was fine.