Our Children's Librarian columnist, Julie Booker, brings us a new view from the stacks every month.

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The Christmas Orange, by Don Gillmor, illustrated by Marie-Louise Gay, features Gillmor’s characteristic humour in this story about a boy who learns the true meaning of Christmas: giving. The books begins with Anton on Santa’s knee at the department store with his 16-page-long list of things he wants for Christmas. When Santa moves him along, Anton tells him, “I’ll leave you the list…My address is at the top. There’s parking on the street.” On Christmas morning, when he receives nothing but an orange, Anton sues Santa. In the trial of the century, disgruntled folks come out to say that they too have been unsatisfied with their Christmas presents, but Santa explains he gives people what they need, not what they want. Feeling unappreciated, Santa quits his job and it's up to Anton to save the holiday.

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Elton the Elf, by Lisa Mallen, illustrated by Roge, showcases common celebrations over the course of the year. Elton is lost and wants to find his way home. Following the calendar, each page shows Elton involved in a holiday in which he feels he doesn’t truly belong, including New Year’s Day, Valentine’s Day, St. Patrick’s Day, Easter, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Fall, Halloween, Remembrance Day, and finally, Christmas, where—at last—Elton finds home.

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The Mummer’s Song, by Bud Davidge, illustrated by Ian Wallace, is about a unique Newfoundland Christmas tradition. Mummers are a swarm of disguised neighbours who go door to door, joking, teasing and acting the fool. Once invited in, a drink is offered. There’s a song and dance, and if the guest’s identity is guessed, the mask comes off. After the quick visit, the group moves along to the next home. The mummers ritual in rural communities has died down in recent times, the Afterword tells us, but it’s making a comeback with revived interest in Newfoundland heritage. This book is the song written by Bud Davdige in 1983 and it comes with a CD and musical score. “There’s big ones and small ones and tall ones and thin,/ Boys dressed as women and girls dressed as men,/ Humps on their backs and mitts on their feet,/ My blessed we’ll die with the heat.” Wallace’s renderings of the mummers display their full foolishness, such as the one “with his underwear stuffed and his trapdoor undone,” wearing his mother’s undergarments. Very fun.

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The musical playfulness continues with A Porcupine in a Pine Tree, A Canadian 12 Days of Christmas, by Helaine Becker, illustrated by Werner Zimmerman. The song lyrics are accompanied by humorous illustrations of stereotypical Canadian subjects, from beaver tails to caribou. “Eight mounties munching/ Seven sled dogs sledding/ Six squirrels curling/ Five Stanley Cups…”

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The Crying Christmas Tree, by Allan Crow, illustrated by David Beyer, is set on a reservation. When Kokum’s many grandchildren do not appreciate how far she has walked into the bush to get them a Christmas tree and they laugh at the scrawny tree she brings back, she gets angry and decides to withhold their presents. But Tatanon (grandpa) reminds her of her love for her family. All is resolved when her grandchildren surprise her with her little tree fully decorated.

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Baseball Bats for Christmas, by Michael Arvaarluk Kusugak, illustrated by Vladyana Krykorka, is the story of seven-year-old Arvaarluk who lives in the Arctic Circle, where trees (known as "standing-ups”) don’t grow. This is a snapshot of an Indigenous community in 1955, in which the hoisting of the Union Jack flag signals Rocky, the bush pilot, to deliver supplies. At Christmas, Father Didier leads the church service, playing the organ and singing hymns. Each person then gives their loved one a favourite possession: a toy gun, caribou-skin mitts, a telescope, a wild dog to be be tamed for the sled team. When the pilot drops off six standing-ups, no one knows what they are, so the community makes them into baseball bats. This launches a new tradition of playing baseball at Christmas. This story has an oral storyteller’s feel to it, replete with sounds: the “squish-chuck” of Rocky filling his plane’s gas tank, and his skis bouncing over the drifts, “flop flop flop.”

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"The Huron Carol" can be found in editions by a few different illustrators, such as Frances Tyrrell or Ian Wallace. Authored by Jean Brebeuf, a Jesuit Missionary in 1642, at Sainte-Marie Among the Hurons, it was originally written in the language of the Huron/Wendat People. It was called “Jesus Ahatonhia” (“Jesus, he is born”) and set to the tune of a French folk song. Considered Canada’s oldest Christmas carol, the song was translated into English in 1926. The nativity here involves Indigenous imagery, for example, with the chiefs bringing gifts of fox and beaver pellets to the newborn baby. “Within a lodge of broken bark the tender babe was found/A ragged robe of rabbit skin enwrapped His beauty round.” The song is also known as “Twas in the Moon of Wintertime.”

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On her first day as teacher-librarian, Julie Booker was asked by a five-year-old if that was her real name. She's felt at home in libraries since her inaugural job as a Page in the Toronto Public Library. She is the author of Up Up Up, a book of short stories published by House of Anansi Press.