Christmas Spirits

As he states in his introduction, St. Amant has always longed to preside over the perfect Christmas celebration, and in the eight stories and 17 poems collected here he strives to invoke the spirit of the season. Originally read aloud to Amant's family and friends on Christmas Eve, the stories are unsophisticated in the telling, though sometimes ambitious in their reach. In ""A Christmas Angel,"" a seven-year-old girl is lost in the sewers under Toronto while trying to rescue a white kitten. After she is rescued several days later by a homeless man, her father feels new sympathy for the downtrodden. Several stories examine the bonds between young and old. When his grandfather presents him with a navel orange, a Yuletide gift imbued with sentimental value, the narrator of ""Do You Hear What I Hear?"" realizes how close he and the old man have become. In ""A Grey Christmas,"" a son takes his father, bound for a nursing-home, on a Christmas Eve stroll around their old neighborhood. The longest story in the collection, ""The Christmas Raven,"" tells of the struggles of a grotesquely deformed orphan boy to make a life for himself with the old glassblower who has adopted him and the classmates who tease and pity him. The poems are narratives as well, describing a boy's Christmas ride on a new mountain bike, Christmas tea, Christmas in sunny California and the receipt of form Christmas cards. ""Greetings, from the paper boy./ Joy and Peace to the World,/ the water company wishes."" More heartfelt than these mass-produced good wishes, but often still as na ve, Amant's homespun collection will appeal to those who buy Hallmark greeting cards. (Nov.)