A Child's Christmas in Brooklyn

Christmas enthusiasts young and old will enjoy Frank Crocitto's nostalgic, near-magic realist take on Christmas in the hazy recesses of the mid-20th century, A Child's Christmas in Brooklyn. Evoking the breathless, wide-eyed wonder of childhood, Crocitto (Insight Is Better Than Ice Cream) describes the interminable wait throughout the fall, homework in November, parents and grandparents' delightfully suspicious preholiday behaviors and the incomprehensibly somber Christmas Eve service. While it offers little new in terms of holiday spirit (following in the stylistic and thematic footsteps of A Christmas Story, though less comical), readers will be pleased by the classic, cozy quality of this reminiscence. Illus. (Nov.)