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The True Gift: A Christmas story

I loved this story about two children, Lily and Liam, who visit their grandparents on their farm in the country at Christmastime. As they pull up to the house, they see White Cow in the field and wonder where her donkey companion has gone. Donkey has moved away and Liam thinks that White Cow looks lonely. Liam is concerned and sets out to research cows. He learns that cows are in fact social animals who live in family units and seem to have feelings. Lily is frustrated and just wants to enjoy Christmas traditions with her family. Liam is very determined to buy a cow friend for White Cow and uses his ingenuity to pull it off on Christmas Eve. The climax really comes early the next morning with a lovely surprise. This book is a lovely mix of tender emotions, generosity, kindness, empathy, suspense and true Christmas spirit. There are detailed black and white sketch illustrations of the characters and scenes scattered throughout the book and the cover illustrations are lovely as well. I’m thrilled to add this to our elementary school library and plan to recommend this book to many students who ask for a great story at any time of the year. I used it as a Christmas read-aloud with my 2nd graders during library time and they LOVED it!