Title: The Christmas Spryte Encounter: Giving
Author: Nanette Crighton
Publisher: Nanette Crighton
ISBN: 978-0-578-78144-0
Genre: Illustrated Children’s Book / Christmas
Pages: 26
Reviewed by: Beth Adams
Pacific Book Review
The narrative flows effortlessly with poetic foot, beat and rhyme in author Nanette Crighton’s beautifully illustrated The Christmas Spryte Encounter: Giving.
Christmas is a holiday of love, family, friends and gifts. The young boy in this story, a 4th Grader, learns for himself, the lesson of giving; having generosity and empathy in his heart for others less fortunate. He sees a disheveled blonde-haired boy standing in the cold snowy weather outside his school’s fence. He goes out to meet the boy as he hands him half of his lunch sandwich knowing he must be hungry. The cold young blond-boy tears his half of a sandwich in half again, saying he will give it to his sister, who also is hungry.
The story continues as the older boy gathers things from his closet at home, puts them in a box, and leaves the box at the fence of his school, hoping the blonde-boy will come to pick it up. He is then rewarded with a visit from a Spryte, an old-grandmotherly fairy named AID, who compliments the boy’s actions of giving, and “wants him on her team” – so to speak. The boy, being wide-eyed and inquisitive as to what is happening feels the Christmas spirit of giving – and finds his satisfaction, where at the end of the story, he sees the young blonde Spryte in a grocery store waving back at him, wearing the winter coat he was given.
The poetic prose of the galley text is exquisite. Nanette Crighton is a wordsmith extraordinaire. Her written voice has a maternal, loving, endearing tone to it, as the book pages with a fanciful story of Christmas Sprytes being kind and giving to each other. One detail I was very impressed with was the use of “sparkles floating in the air” within the illustrations which had the Sprytes present. This gives a subliminal feeling of the supernatural presence of such angelic entities.
The Christmas Spryte Encounter: Giving, of course, is an ideal book to read during the holiday season, however the moral of the story, that of giving, is a wonderful theme any time of the year. As it is better to give than receive, giving this book to a family with youngsters will be rewarded many times over with the kindness, love, and generosity becoming contagious among all fortunate to read this wonderful story.
