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This was a gift that my son's fourth-grade teacher gave to all of her students. We read it together over the span of 3 nights and bonded over our shared loathing of it. We decided that we are very lucky to never have read the Little House on the Prairie series, as one of the pieces in this collection of short stories and poems is a little narrative about a special Christmas in which Laura & Mary create a beautiful button string for baby Carrie. My son & I decided that enduring this story was officially the biggest waste of time we had ever experienced. The other stories were almost as boring, and included in the collection are the lyrics to Silent Night & a few Langston Hughes poems. Strange.

We actually enjoyed "The Christmas Coat" and I appreciated Hughes's poem about his connection to the "dark" wise man, but if you see this in your Scholastic catalog with a 10-cent price tag and think it'd make a great gift to your students, think again. If your student actually takes the time to read it, they will get the idea that books are best used as sleeping aids or kindling.
No offense to Morgan's teacher (we love her); I just want to spare others from wasting their bonus points.
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